Some brands stay with you for life.

In the fast-evolving world of retail, Nike is once again leading the charge—this time by revolutionising the very concept of shopping in-store. Their flagship locations in New York and Shanghai are no longer just stores; they are living, breathing brand ecosystems that blend the physical and digital realms to create a seamless, personalised shopping experience. 

At the heart of Nike's flagship stores is the Nike App, a vital companion to your retail experience. By simply scanning a QR code on a mannequin, shoppers immediately see available sizes and colours of the item on display, without needing to search through racks. If you find something you like but don't want to wander around the store to track it down, you can request that the item be delivered directly to a designated fitting room.  

And in a move that is both futuristic and practical, Nike’s instant checkout feature allows customers to purchase products without ever standing in a line. This frictionless approach to retail blends convenience with innovation, making shopping not just easier but also more enjoyable.  It’s a sign that retail is evolving into an experience where technology doesn’t just enable purchases—it transforms how we interact with brands. 

What Brands Can Learn from Nike's Innovation 

Nike has proven that the future of in-store retail is not just about offering products—it’s about crafting an experience that resonates with customers and brings them into the store to experience an immersion that may be superior to an online purchase.  Making a store visit an occasion.  

Whether it’s hyper-personalised features, innovative technology, or immersive product engagement, Nike's approach offers valuable lessons for any brand looking to connect with consumers in fresh ways within their own branded environments.  

W/Brand Agency keeps an eye open for these shifts in technology, branding, and retail to ensure we popularise them with our clients and integrate them into our future concepts. Nike’s approach is a clear example of how technology can be used to foster deeper connections with consumers. By integrating thoughtful tech and focusing on real utility, Nike has created a retail environment that goes beyond the sale and turns every visit into a moment of engagement. 

For brands that want to stay relevant in today’s fast-paced retail landscape, taking a page from Nike’s playbook could be the key to creating loyal, engaged customers. By integrating technology thoughtfully and focusing on real utility, brands can transform their stores into more than just points of sale—they can become experiences that customers want to return to again and again. 

Keeping it Human 

In the fast-paced world of technology and engineering, companies often find themselves grappling with the complexity of their products and services. The challenge isn’t just in developing cutting-edge solutions—it's communicating them effectively. These businesses are at the forefront of innovation, but that very innovation can create a barrier when it comes to marketing. Often, the details are intricate, the jargon is specialized, and standing out amidst an overcrowded marketplace can feel impossible. For B2B tech and engineering companies, being succinct, clear, and differentiated in communication is key to building brand recognition and trust. So, how can these businesses excel at communications in such a competitive and technically dense industry? 

Simplify the Complex 

While your solutions might be highly technical, your communications don’t need to be. One of the most common mistakes in the tech and engineering space is overloading your audience with jargon and technical specifications. Your potential clients, while knowledgeable, don't necessarily need to understand every minute detail. Instead, focus on communicating the outcome—what problem your product or service solves and the real-world impact it has. For example, instead of discussing a complex algorithm, explain how your software improves efficiency or reduces costs. Simplifying your message doesn’t mean dumbing it down; it means making it accessible to a broader audience. 

Differentiate Through Value, Not Features 

In B2B communications, it’s easy to fall into the trap of listing features. "We do this, we offer that." But what your clients care about most is how you can solve their problems and deliver measurable value. Focus on the benefits, not just the specifications. Highlight your unique selling points (USPs) and why your solution stands out from competitors in terms of ROI, ease of use, scalability, or innovation. Show the impact your technology has on the bottom line—whether that’s increasing productivity, reducing risk, or driving new business. 

 Tell a Compelling Story 

The best way to make your company memorable is to tell a story. People connect with narratives far more than they do with dry facts. Instead of simply detailing how your product works, tell the story of how it transformed a client’s business. Use case studies, testimonials, and client success stories to demonstrate the power of your solution in a real-world context. Showing how your company plays a role in your clients' successes helps humanize your business and builds trust. 

Use Visuals to Simplify the Message 

In an industry full of complex data, visuals can be incredibly effective in breaking down intricate concepts. Infographics, product demos, and explainer videos can make your communications far more engaging and understandable. Visual aids help bring abstract ideas to life and provide a much-needed visual hook to maintain the attention of your audience. Additionally, well-designed visuals can differentiate your brand and make it stand out in a crowded market. 

Be Consistent and Clear 

In the world of B2B tech and engineering, consistency is paramount. Your messaging should be unified across all channels, whether it's your website, social media, email campaigns, or press releases. Ensure that your tone and voice are consistent, reflecting your brand’s personality and values. Clear, direct messaging fosters trust and shows that your company understands its own strengths and capabilities. 

Engage with Empathy 

Finally, empathy is a crucial factor in communication. Understand your clients' challenges and speak directly to their needs. Instead of solely focusing on what your technology does, put yourself in the shoes of the business decision-maker or engineer you're speaking to. What problems do they face daily? How can your solution alleviate their pain points? Speaking to the emotional aspects of their business can create a deeper connection and build long-lasting relationships. 

Conclusion 

Winning in communications as a technology or engineering company is all about clarity, differentiation, and empathy. By simplifying complex concepts, emphasizing value, telling compelling stories, and maintaining a consistent and thoughtful approach, B2B tech and engineering businesses can cut through the noise and win their audience’s trust. The key is to remember that while your solutions may be high-tech and sophisticated, your communication doesn’t have to be. Keep it clear, keep it focused, and most importantly, keep it human. 

In a nutshell - we’re talking about influencers and their economy. We know that influencers, produce and share written, image, and video content and earn money through affiliate marketing, brand sponsorships, merchandising, and paid subscriptions. This creator economy therefore is a relatively new socioeconomic system empowering content creators to, directly and indirectly, make money from the content they develop.  

 

Speed and simplicity like never before

Highly intuitive Gen AI-powered tools like Typeface and Microsoft’s Designer generate graphics, product shots, and social media posts.  These tools integrate the functionality of language models such as GPT-4 with image generation capabilities, making content creation much quicker and easier. Gen AI-capable video tools like CapCut are great for beginners as many of the features are free and they are simple to use.  Content creators race towards time-saving features like auto-caption, which generates almost perfect subtitles for social media reels and video content. It can also write video scripts from a prompt, create promo clips from longer videos, and auto-create ads using product URLs.  Runway makes videos and animations from simple text prompts. It also transforms still images into videos and generates lip-syncing avatars using organic voice recordings. 

 

Lightricks surveyed over 1,000 content creators and identified that 53% already use generative AI to create photo backgrounds. 47% said they use it for video backgrounds, and 84% said they would likely use AI if it helped save them time or money. Tools like Photo AI learn to recognise facial patterns, allowing new images to be generated according to prompts provided by the user. Such tools will potentially eliminate the need for content creators to pay for travel and in some instances, professional photographers.  There is, however still a lot to be said for human creativity, W/Brand and the magic of real images in real situations. The best influencers will learn how to harness the power of AI without coming across as fake, which has the potential to work against them.  

 

What happens next? 

Gen AI assists with the technical aspects of content creation therefore it is becoming increasingly easier to enter the creator economy without any in-depth technical know-how. Where we are heading can be seen by the emergence of AI-generated influencers like Aitana Lopez who is an example of what is popping up on social media feeds. As generative AI becomes increasingly accessible and easy to use we will potentially witness an unprecedented explosion of this type of content and a rush of new players to the creator economy.  

 

Whilst some aspects of content creation will inevitably become automated, this technological advancement will swiftly increase the volume of content clutter. An increase in content quantity will inevitably come with the risk of sacrificing quality. Generic and repetitive content is boring and brands who associate with this for the sake of quantity run the risk of losing hard-earned sharpness and appeal. This will call for a necessary counterbalance from brand message innovation so that a strengthened brand identity emerges. Powerful brand visual, literal and audio disciplines, innovative iconography and precise application frameworks will require more attention to ensure that the now new storytellers, our influencers, are equipped with robust brand tools that don’t run the risk of being lost to the wind. 

 

 

Without a purpose beyond profit, people won’t work for you or buy your products

Most businesses have a deep and abiding love affair with profit. They measure it, report on it and build strategies to maximise it.

Consumers, on the other hand, aren’t motivated at all by how much money a company makes. True, they expect companies to make good stuff and deliver great service however what also matters is how companies treat their employees, choose their supply chain, how they protect the environment and whether they’re ethical and transparent about what they do and how they do it. 

Brand purpose matters

Brand purpose is the reason, aside from making a profit, why a brand exists. It’s the difference you make, the actions you inspire, and the legacy you leave behind.  Having a robust and meaningful brand purpose attracts like-minded customers and inspires employees. In a 2021 article, Deloitte argues that differentiators of the past, like price and quality, have become commodified. Instead, brand purpose has evolved into the key competitive differentiator. Customers buy from brands that share their values and contribute materially to their society. Research from Edelman found that 84% of respondents felt they needed to share values with a brand to buy from it. Brand purpose doesn’t just attract new customers, it retains and nurtures existing ones. In another global study by Deloitte, 57% of respondents indicated that they are more loyal to brands that commit to addressing social inequalities.

Happy at work 

The world of work is changing too. Employees want to do work that gives them a sense of purpose. Data from McKinseysuggests that when employees find their work to be meaningful, performance improves by 33% and are 75% more committed to their company, and 49% less likely to leave. A clear brand purpose not only improves employee engagement and retention, but it also creates a positive culture in the workplace and improves the perception of a brand as an employer.

Being Responsible 

If brand purpose is the reason a company exists beyond profit, corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) is the vehicle through which it’s expressed. It transforms your purpose from a mission statement into a set of tangible actions and policies. Without CSER, brand purpose can be flimsy and ineffectual. Brands that prioritise CSER build trust and brand loyalty, attract better talent, and create a clear differentiation within the market.  It also allows companies to identify and mitigate social and environmental issues that pose a risk and enables brands to stay compliant with ever-changing regulations.

Doing it Right

Big brand / big heart – Patagonia

 Founder Yvon Chouinard summarises the brand’s purpose succinctly in an interview with McKinsey: ‘Building the best product while causing the least harm is at the heart of what we do’.

 In 2016 Patagonia donated 100% of its Black Friday sales to environmental charities

 It created a Worn Wear program to encourage customers to buy used clothes and recycle what can no longer be used.

 It has committed to being carbon neutral across its entire business by 2025.

 To round off this example, in 2022, it was announced that Chouinard, having made enough money himself, would be transferring the entire ownership of Patagonia to a non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature. 

 Smaller brand / big heart  - Tony’s Chocolonely

Unlike brands like Patagonia, whose mission has developed and expanded over time, Tony’s was created with their mission in mind. As such, the entire company is dedicated to eradicating modern slavery and child labour from the chocolate supply chain. In their own words, ‘Our mission is to realize 100% slave free chocolate. To achieve this, we must make the most amazing ethically produced chocolate to help cocoa farmers create a better future for themselves and inspire other chocolate makers to follow our example. In other words, we want to change the mainstream chocolate industry.’ 

Tony’s has full transparency in its supply chain – Tony’s works directly with cocoa farmers to ensure they receive fair prices and aren’t exploited - paying a premium on top of the minimum fair trade cost of cocoa beans to support a living wage for farmers.

Tony’s collaborates with other chocolate brands to push for systemic industry change and pledges to reduce its carbon footprint and offset emissions through climate investment and no deforestation.

Where to begin

A well-equipped and talented branding agency consults for the first part identifying:

Why a brand / company exists

What products and/or services the brand / company provides and how good they are.

What drives and inspires the brand / company.

What difference the brand / company makes.

What skills the brand / company has and how it can improve society.  

Once this why is clear, ‘how’ it is used to shape the inner and outer voice of a business becomes the innovations platform for the rest of the work of a great branding agency. It is this ‘how’ that inspires action and triggers change. It is this ‘how’ that motivates the doing. And it’s this ‘how’ that will differentiates. 

Whether your business is at the start of its journey and you’re searching for your ‘why’ and ‘how’, or whether you need a little help in finding your way back to purpose, we’d love to chat. Please get in touch.

As new technologies and platforms emerge, and new demographics bring their own opinions and attitudes to how they consume and interact with organisations. And brands must adapt or face extinction. Technology changes at such a rapid rate that it can be hard to keep up. But keeping your branding aligned with technological advances is crucial. 

In this article, we will explore the importance of branding as part of a digital transformation strategy, as well as provide some digital transformation examples.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation covers changing or updating an entire company’s operations, assets and values using digital technologies. This can include internal systems, marketing collateral and customer touch points.

These Elements of a digital transformation strategy include:

• Adopting & updating company-wide digital technologies: This involves identifying and assessing the digital needs of an organisation moving forward, and adopting various digital tools that help you meet your business goals. This can be everything from internal communication and collaboration tools like Slack, Google Workspace or MS Teams, CRMs such as Salesforce or HubSpot, digital marketing platforms such as Hootsuite or Semrush, or website platforms such as WordPress, Magento or Shopify.
• Customer focus: Every digital transformation strategy has to have the customer at its heart. The customer is vital to any organisation and any decision made regarding digital assets or technology has to be driven by their ever-changing needs and expectations. This can include adopting chat functionality for customer service, embracing new digital marketing channels or offering new ways for users to convert. Ultimately, if a proposed change isn’t going to improve customer experience somewhere along the line, then it must be evaluated as to whether it’s necessary.
• Shifting corporate culture: Any digital transformation framework needs to factor in changing an organisation’s culture, values and the attitudes of its staff. If digital assets, branding and processes are changed, but if those responsible for the running of the company fail to adapt, any digital transformation strategy will likely fail.
• Iterative improvement: One of the final elements of digital transformation is evolution and continuous improvement. Although a digital transformation project may have a defined scope, you can’t simply kick back and relax once it’s done. Technologies, processes and customers will continue to change, and experimenting with new approaches and adapting to the landscape will allow organisations to stay on top.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

This Darwin quote rings true and can be applied to both branding and digital transformation. You need to be constantly evolving and adapting. 

Digital Transformation & Branding

So where does branding come into this? Well, if an organisation is going to devote considerable time, effort and budget into a digital transformation, why would they not consider their branding at the same time?

In 2024, this means reviewing your brand identity and whether this fits with your new approach. Customers will need to be made aware of the changes you’ve made to ensure that their experience isn’t jarring, and to allow them to embrace the latest version of your organisation. Effectively communicating and broadcasting your new values will help them buy-in and join you on the ride.

In reality, this means reviewing and updating your brand assets and customer touchpoints such as your logo, website, social channels and potentially your brand values. In a saturated marketplace, differentiation is key. A 2023 survey by Eventbrite found that 78% of millennials prefer experiences over products, and 80% want to feel more connected to their communities and the rest of the world by creating lifelong experiences. Providing your customers with the means to do this will be key to long-term success.

Let’s explore some examples of how brands adapt, firstly by looking at IT behemoth, IBM. As a technology company whose customers and advocates expect innovation and cutting-edge development, it would be bizarre if they decided to stick to their original logo:

Their current logo speaks to the corporate customer that they are courting. It’s sleek, serious and modern, values that are reflected in their clients.

In a similar vein, compare and contrast Google’s original logo with their current iteration below. While the old logo carries immense amounts of nostalgia and 90s kitsch and links to the company that was founded in a garage, it’s hardly suitable for the leading global tech corporation that Google has become.

However, we discuss the need for experiences and sometimes that means maintaining your history, allowing customers to become part of something that goes back generations. Step forward, Levi’s. As we can see below the logo has gone through multiple iterations that reflect Levi’s journey from utilitarian workwear to a global fashion brand.

However, there’s a common thread (pun intended) with the labelling on the back of their jeans.

This patch allows the wearer to be part of something bigger, part of an American cultural institution, and share their values of ruggedness, rebellion, exploration and freedom. While their jeans, jackets, t-shirts and skirts continually change to adapt and influence new trends, and the customer base may have shifted, they’re still the same product.

It’s clear that brands that fail to adapt and evolve will face struggles in the future. As customers’ wants and needs shift in the digital age, organisations must change with them. Changing your brand may be necessary, but it can also be fraught with pitfalls. We’ve previously written about The 6 Golden Rules For Building Your Brand, and these all still apply through your transformation. So, if you’re planning a digital transformation and require assistance with your branding, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Blanding is exactly as described – bland.

It’s a trend that many enormous brands have followed, and it’s based around keeping everything clean and simple. But does it actually work? Or do you just end up getting lost in a crowd full of similar-looking designs?

Think sans serif fonts, muted plain colours and clean lines. Oh, and white space, lots of blank, white space.

If you want to see a visual representation of ‘blanding’, just check out logos including UBER, Burberry, Google, Microsoft and Balenciaga. It seems the plain, stuffy and uninspiring logos of the tech world have spilled into the mainstream. Who knew fashion brands could be so plain?

If some of the major players are doing it, there must be some advantages to it, right? Let’s explore the pros and cons and then draw our own conclusion.

What are the benefits of blanding?

A lot of brands have taken this approach because it feels safe. With a simple, clean brand logo, you’re unlikely to offend anyone. However, just because something is safe doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. It’s always good to get out of your comfort zone. People want to fit in, right? And lots of brands are trying to fit in too.

Bland brands are simple and easy to understand. Basic fonts can appear easier to read and offer a very neutral stance.

Another reason why companies opt for a simple design is also because it can be cheaper. No bells and whistles, so design costs tend to be less.

And finally, another advantage is that blanding often feels like it will appeal to more people. It stops people from making certain assumptions and associations and creates a nice, comfortable neutral stance.

Brands feel that more people are going to like what they’ve produced, but this isn’t necessarily true. Some very traditional brands that have rebranded to something more clean and modern have had to deal with a lot of backlash for losing their personality.

What are the disadvantages of blanding?

Picture this. Your brand is on the shelves in a supermarket. You look at all the products in your category, and they all look the same. Is this really what you want, to have the exact same visuals as everyone else? The bottom line is – your brand just won’t stand out. Why would you want to blend in, particularly in such a competitive market?

• Creativity, it seems, has gone out the window. Life isn’t much fun without a little creativity. By leaning towards blanding, brands are missing out on amazing creativity.
• Sure, a bland brand may not offend or confuse anyone at all, but it will be lost in a sea of other similar brands. It’s all about gaining a competitive advantage, right? And it’s hard to do that by being extremely generic.
• You are much better off working towards rebranding strategies that are based on what YOUR audience wants, and you don’t have the same audience as everyone else. Now is the time to champion authentic, creative design that really speaks to (the right) people.
• This could be a short-lived trend (that’s already falling out of favour with many). It may seem safe to keep it simple, but just like any trend, it’s only momentary. You really don’t want to blend in for too long. Boring never leaves a lasting impression.
• People are realising that these generic black-and-white, sans-serif typographic logos all end up looking the same. There is nothing stand-out or memorable about them, and that's what effective branding is all about – right?
• Giving your brand some personality and uniqueness can help to form trust with your audience.
• According to research by Kantar and BrandZ, brands seen as highly ‘disruptive’ and ‘different’ saw an increase in brand value of more than 28% in three years, compared to a 5% drop for those brands considered less so.

A few examples of unique brands

Did you know Google’s brand logo used to be more fun? It included an exclamation mark. Their brand logo has changed significantly over the years. Although the font used to be a little more out there (and it’s now a lot simpler), to be fair to them, they have kept their bright brand colours.

Brands like Airbnb, Oatly, Lego and Hubspot all stand out, right? It’s because they put a lot of effort into creating distinctive brands that are recognised as trailblazers in their market. They aren’t afraid to use bold colours and stand-out symbols in their logos.

How to create a unique brand

Your brand identity is so important, and it needs to come across in your logo. If you opt for something that’s completely void of any personality, no one is going to get to know what your brand is about.

Although blanding has been popular, there now seems to be a shift in this attitude, with more interest in unique brands. Creating an original brand is an excellent way of capturing the attention of your ideal audience.

According to McKinsey & Company, unique brands often dominate their specific space, commanding a market share of 70% or more.

It’s crucial to consider what you want your brand personality to be and how you want to come across. For example, do you want to be seen as pioneering, playful, professional, creative or fun? Having a clear vision for what sort of brand you want to be from the start can really help when you get to the design stages.

It is possible to be original AND come across as professional and trustworthy, you just need the right support to make this happen. Working with a respected brand design agency can help you to achieve your vision. Need support? We’re a remote creative team. Let us support your marketing team and create a unique brand design that you’re proud of.

Introducing Peach Fuzz

More than just a shade on a spectrum – the Pantone colour of the year has become a cultural statement. One that ties in current trends with meaningful symbology.

This year, this pristine pastel tone expresses a heartfelt desire for togetherness. It creates a world that nurtures kindness and connection with a soft and tender, cosy warmth that cocoons with an all-embracing spirit.

Peace Fuzz is a light and comforting colour that sits somewhere between pink and orange. The shade marks Pantone’s 25th anniversary of the Colour of the Year programme. And Laurie Pressman, vice president of the institute, says that the hue showcases our “want to be close to those we love and the joy we get when allowing ourselves to tune into who we are and savour that moment of quiet time".

The Benefits of Using a Trending Tone

So, how can we leverage the power of this peachy-perfect hue and slot it into the branding of your company?

By adding this delicate tone to your brand logo or brand colours, you can express the same powerful sentiment and meaningful closeness to your audience. By selecting a shade that conjures up happy feelings and evokes a cosy tranquillity (like Peach Fuzz!) – you’ll instil this sentiment into your audience, too. And who doesn’t want to create a close bond to their clients and customers?

But what are the other benefits of aligning your own brand scheme to brand colour trends?

First of all – relevance. It shows that you’re up to date with the newest trends and cultural movements.

Being relevant puts you a step ahead of your competitors and will make your brand more distinctive in the heads of your consumers.

In terms of Peach Fuzz – this hue boasts versatile superiority. It’s effortlessly complemented by a range of dark and light tones, as well as black and white. Use it to accent dark colours and warm up your branding, or let it add a punch of vibrancy to colder hues.

How to add Peach Fuzz into your branding?

Whether you want to show off this shade front and centre to all of your customer-facing materials or simply let it lend a contemporary touch to your colour scheme, here’s how you can add it to your company:

• As your primary shade – running this colour scheme throughout your company branding will instantly make this pastel peachy tone be seen.
• As an accent colour, maybe you’ve already got an established brand colour palette. That’s ok – you can weave the tone through your current scheme, adding it subtly into different elements for a fresh, switched-up style.
• Adding it to specific marketing materials and projects. Maybe you’re not quite ready to leave your old colour scheme behind. (We definitely understand the importance of keeping a refined colour palette!) In that case, why not keep your brand colours the exact same and instead experiment with using new hues throughout your biggest campaigns?
• Gradient into peach. If your brand tones are anything on the colour chart between cream and red, then you can subtly gradient into the colour of the year. This also lends an extra edge and dimension to your scheme. It also means that your current brand colours remain the same and easily identifiable.
• Customise your colours. Peach Fuzz is a specific tone with the right amount of light and darkness. However, if you’re struggling to make it work with your scheme, you could get a designer or branding agency to help you discover a brand colour idea. A shade that would slot in, more seamlessly.

Whatever you plan on doing, keep in mind that your logo serves as the beacon of your brand’s identity. It’s the visual symbol that your audience has come to associate with who you are and what you do. Whether you hire a top-notch digital designer or take the job on yourself in-house – make sure that your brand colours and logo reflect your business, your mission and what you do.

Brand Logo Colour - Case Studies

Spotify

The ‘resting’ colour and brand logo for Spotify is a bright green hue. This ties in with the 2017 Pantone Colour of the Year, which was greenery. This bright shade conveys the brand’s growth and vitality. It demonstrates the brand’s new and unique stance on music streaming services, too.

Green is often linked to balance and harmony. Within the realm of Spotify, this association could suggest a harmonious connection between their users and the music that they listen to and enjoy.

Chevrolet

In 2021, the Pantone Colour of the Year was actually two independent colours. This highlighted how different elements can come together to support one another. Ultimate Grey and Illuminating Yellow were described as a marriage of strength and optimism.

Chevrolet also uses these two tones in their logo. The hallmark stamp has been varying shades of yellow throughout the years, from golden tones to bright yellow. The current badge dons a vibrant tone, similar to Illuminating Yellow.

This duo of hues works brilliantly for a car company. Grey is symbolic of solid and dependable elements, as well as long-lasting strength. Illuminating yellow lets the brand’s ethos shine through – a happy and bright company with a sunny outlook.

Yahoo

In 2018, the Pantone Colour of the Year was Ultra Violet. “A dramatically provocative and thoughtful purple shade, Ultra Violet communicates originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us towards the future.”

A deep purple tone is (and always has) been used by Yahoo. When the company first began back in 1994, many other tech giants were using blue and green branding and so purple differentiated them. But this bright hue, as described above, is perfect for the tech space as it portrays a forward-thinking and dynamic mind.

Need some brand guidance? We’re here to help. Get in touch with us today to bring your brand vision to life.

AI is no longer the future. It has infiltrated our world in ways we never thought possible. We’ve seen AI used for processing large amounts of data, writing copy, answering questions, and most recently, the creation of hyper-realistic video via Open AI’s new product, Sora

We have no idea where the widespread adoption and integration of AI in society could take us, but we’re fascinated by what it could do in brand marketing. Is it a case of jumping on board, or approach with caution? Well, how you use AI in branding is completely unique to your business. But one thing’s for sure, AI should never replace human creativity.

In this blog post, we’ll explore where AI is already being used, how it might be utilised, and examine the pros and cons of using AI as part of your brand marketing strategy in 2024 and beyond.

How is AI used in brand marketing?

Currently, AI can be used in a wide variety of ways for brand marketing within an organisation, especially with the creation of assets and resources such as imagery, ad copy, on-page SEO and creative content.

Although not perfect, when reviewed and quality-checked by a human, AI-generated content is doing an OK job. This can vastly speed up the process and reduce the investment required, all while maintaining consistency and communicating brand values. However, it’s important not to get lost along the way. If you use AI to write all your copy, you’re essentially producing content that’s not really original or creative. It should be used as a tool to enhance your brand content, rather than replace it. If you don’t stay true to your tone of voice as a brand, you’ll start to lose your brand personality.

It’s also long been harnessed for use within programmatic advertising, specifically, analysing vast amounts of data at scale. Combined with ever-improving algorithms and automation tactics, users can significantly improve ROI and deliver a highly personalised experience for your customers.

Taking this further, the use of chatbots within CRM has been a beneficiary of AI. By imbuing the chatbots with a defined personality and brand voice, and incorporating this into other touchpoints, it’s possible to create a highly consistent and joined-up user experience.

Finally, at an everyday level, AI can be used for automation and brand protection. For example, it can schedule social media posts, manage ad campaigns or detect fraudulent activity such as the creation of fake accounts, comment spam or plagiarism.

Until now, AI has largely been used so far in the delivery of advertising and branding collateral. When it comes to creating and developing a brand, humans still rule the roost. However, writing in Forbes, Ian Liddicoat predicts that “AI is perfectly placed to change every other aspect of the industry, making an impact across everything from production right through to insights and reporting.” So with that in mind, what can we expect in the future?

What is the future of AI in branding?

The rest of the 2020s will see AI continue to improve in both its ability, creative output and the speed at which it can work. But how might this look in the day-to-day for marketers and branding professionals?

One very specific way that AI can prove its worth is with the reduction in the use of third-party cookies over the coming years. Google Analytics 4 has already stopped using cookies and AI will help fill the gap, allowing marketers to keep delivering relevant, targeted advertising and gain insights into campaign effectiveness.

However, creativity is at the heart of branding and marketing, and as Ian Liddicoat puts it “there has always been difficulty in establishing how creative components interact with media and data. As a result, insight into what makes a successful campaign design has been elusive.”

AI and Creativity

We expect AI to be a core part of the solution to this problem in that it will help us all understand how different campaign components are interoperable, and how we can use this understanding to improve branding and marketing performance.

For example, we may be able to understand which specific creative components of a given campaign are driving interaction and engagement. Consequently, marketers will be able to focus on these performance differentiators and potentially create real-time custom content for a given customer segment, to achieve their organisation’s goals.

Due to AI's innate deep learning, these findings can then be used to influence future campaigns and target new potential customers. This predictive analytics can help brands anticipate evolving customer needs and preferences, and enable them to shape their brand or develop targeted campaigns to stay ahead of the competition.

We don’t ever see AI replacing humans in creative roles within brand marketing, as the models are still nowhere near capable of replicating human thought (they also have some unfortunate drawbacks, which we’ll explore in the next section). However, writing in The Drum, Webb Wright argues:

“Despite its relatively recent appearance on the mainstream cultural stage, AI is already widely viewed by many marketers as being an essential tool. By extension, there appears to be a growing consensus that marketers who embrace AI in the present will have a significant future advantage. As the futurist Daniel Burrus recently [said], AI will not replace humans, but rather, “humans will be replaced by humans using AI.”

What are the pros and cons of using AI in your brand strategy?

However, the use of AI does not come without considerations and balancing of the pros and cons. We’ve seen how AI can significantly improve the speed and consistency of your branding, but what are the drawbacks?

• Quantity Over Quality: Given the ease of creating AI content, it is easy for marketing professionals to adopt a “that’ll do” mentality, safe in the knowledge that they can simply try again.
• Unimaginative Campaigns: The use of the same handful of AI tools by marketers can lead to convergence, with everybody ending up with the same, monotonous and uninspired creative output. With a focus on performance and metrics, we may lose the imagination that makes some campaigns great in the first place.
• Falsehoods and Biases: AI tools can be prone to presenting false information as the truth, with no real way to determine the difference. This can prevent significant risks when it comes to perpetuating potentially damaging human biases and discriminations. 

As we can see, an organisation must still use a human to ensure that their use of AI allows them to be inclusive, representative and, above all, trustworthy. Blindly trusting and utilising AI could cause more harm than good. However, it’s also clear that AI represents a huge opportunity when it comes to brand marketing in 2024 and beyond. Turbocharged campaign performance, improved user journeys and hyper-personalised content are all within reach of forward-thinking organisations that can make AI work for them.

At Withbrand, we’re the experts in creating B2B branding strategies that deliver results. If you’d like to discuss our branding services, don’t hesitate to contact us.

With more screens and ways to consume media than ever, even brands that achieve success can find that it is short-lived. This is where brand coherence and brand immersion come in. 

Together, these help build a strong connection with your audience and make your brand work for you in the long term. In this blog post, we’re going to explore what brand coherence and immersion are before exploring how you can use these to monetise your brand’s Intellectual Property (IP).

What are brand coherence and immersion?

Brand coherence and immersion go hand in hand, but what are they?

Brand Coherence

Brand coherence fundamentally means that all touchpoints and engagements with your brand are consistent, recognisable and meaningful, regardless of the medium. It’s the thread which runs through everything, meaning your audience can pick you out from the crowd and instantly understand your message, as well as your brand identity.

One of the best ways to think about this is with a music band. If they’re on stage, with each member playing a different tune, the result is chaos. Instead, each member knows their role and their place, and the result is a great performance. Much like a band nailing its performance, achieving brand coherence takes time, effort and consistency across all mediums and outputs. Here, brands such as Nike, Apple, Pepsi and more stand out as excellent examples of the importance of brand cohesion. We instantly see them and recognise who they are and what they stand for.

Brand Immersion

Brand immersion is built on the foundations of brand coherence. This is where your target audience and immerse them in the world you’ve created. This makes them feel part of your brand and moves the relationship from a transactional one to an emotional connection. It’s at this stage you build brand loyalty and set yourself up for long-term success.

Designerly define brand immersion as:

“...a process used to fully immerse an audience into the brand’s world with a whimsical experience. [It] aims to make the user feel part of the product’s or service’s environment.

To completely immerse a customer into the branding, the company has to dive deep into market research to understand them thoroughly. The in-depth analysis involves knowing who the audience is to captivate them in new ways.

Brand immersion is all about creating an unforgettable experience for the customer. Essentially, it takes the user somewhere where they haven’t been before.”

One of the best ways to immerse your audience in your brand is through storytelling. Humans love stories, and a captivating, inspiring and engaging story is a fantastic way to build an emotional bond. Examples could include Dove's Real Beauty campaign or Patagonia's environmental & climate activism. These brands don't just sell products. They immerse their audiences in stories that inspire, connect and build brand loyalty.

How to use Brand Coherence & Immersion to Monetise Your Brand’s IP

Fundamentally, anything a brand does or creates can be monetised. And when it comes to this storytelling, technology and new platforms play a significant role in amplifying immersion. Whether it’s interactive sites and apps, VR and AR functionality, personalised posts on social media or AI customer service, these experiences both entertain and build lasting connections with your audience.

Successful brands convince their customers (and themselves) that by consuming their products or engaging with their services, they will appear different and, usually, better. This is the whole reason why people choose to associate themselves with some brands over others. Once you’ve built your brand and have built the following, there are several ways to monetise it, depending on what you do. 

Remember when we said that almost anything can be monetised? Well, examples include your name, logo, any designs, stories, processes, and even your perceived authority in a given industry. 

In a purely hypothetical example, you could be a tech company that provides B2B payment solutions. You could monetise your expertise by selling your processes in areas such as invoicing, accounting, payments, etc. And what’s more, you could sell accreditation, featuring your brand name and logo, as an endorsement that a given company follows your proven methods. 

Likewise, you could create webinars, training courses and even industry events off the back of your identity. By telling your story of how you came to be and what you stand for, and then allowing your audience to immerse themselves in it, you can open up a range of potential revenue streams.

Using the real-world example of Patagonia again, they've created a strong brand around environmentalism and sustainability, which extends beyond their core clothing products. They licence their design principles and materials to other brands, host educational workshops, and since 1985, have been donating 1% of revenue to community-oriented, grassroots environmental groups through small grants, worth up to $15,000. 

What’s more, in 2022, Patagonia turned over 98% of their stock, worth about $100m a year in dividends, to a new non-profit, the Holdfast Collective, focused on climate activism, including political advocacy. This approach not only generates additional revenue but also reinforces their brand identity and attracts more like-minded customers.

Building a brand and monetising your IP requires a strategic vision, ongoing commitment, and a deep understanding of your audience. Although not easy, the potential rewards are significant, and building a strong brand can uncover huge amounts of underlying potential in its intellectual property. 

Brands are living and ever-evolving things that are more than just a name, logo and tagline. By developing a strong brand identity, immersing your audience within it, and leveraging your IP in a range of ways, you can truly make your brand work for you.

If you’d like to find out more about our B2B branding services, and how we can help you grow, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Now, instead of a lifeless photo, you see a short video of the same product. Someone is reading a book while they travel on an aeroplane, curled up on their sofa, or with their child in bed. You’re no longer selling a product but entertaining people with a story.

Creating content that engages consumers is known as brand entertainment. But why is it important, and where do you begin? Keep reading for branding advice on entertaining your audience and how to get started.

What Does Entertaining Your Audience Actually Mean?

Entertaining your audience is about engaging consumers with content like short videos, photos, films, and TV shows to improve brand awareness. The aim is to create meaning behind the brand and an emotional connection to consumers. 

It’s better than directly telling the customer to buy your product, which can be cold and salesy. People want to know that you care about them, and in return, they care about you.

Why is Entertaining Your Audience Important?

Before you start coming up with entertaining ideas to push your brand identity, it’s vital to know why you’re doing it. Otherwise, you’ll create dry content that doesn’t provide value to customers. 

• Builds trust with your audience - Communicating your start-up story and beliefs enables people to see you as a brand rather than a product. Think of Levi’s. They sell jeans, but their real message is that they create high-quality jeans made to last. They’re showing that they have their consumer’s best interest at heart, which builds trust.
• Creates an emotional connection with your consumers - Humans have a deep need for connection. So, using entertainment to evoke emotions will draw the audience to you.
• Cost-effective - Entertaining your audience typically uses digital methods, so it can reach thousands of people worldwide and skyrocket brand recognition.
• Sustainable marketing - Once your content is out there, it gains traction and attracts new consumers without requiring mass production.

How to Use Your Brand to Entertain Your Audience

Knowing why you need to entertain your audience is one thing, but knowing how to do it is another. Here are a few ways to get started.

Draw from your brand’s story

Many retail brands don’t realise that their brands are the story, and you should turn those stories into an experience for your consumers.

Maybe your company began because you struggled with hair loss, so you developed a hair growth oil. Perhaps you care about the environment and love running, so you made trainers from sustainable materials. Whether you have an ecommerce shop or a physical store, there’s a reason behind your products - tell it.

If you’re struggling to find a direction, revisit the basics with our guide on how to create a brand or try developing a brand character.

Take inspiration from media and entertainment companies

If you want to create high-quality brand entertainment, take branding tips from the best. Look at competitors or high-earning companies to identify how they engage their customers.

Nike's "Just Do It" campaign is a classic entertainment success story. The slogan connects with millions of people who want to exercise but struggle to, well, just do it. The adverts focus on determination and trying hard to get what you want. But it's subliminal message is, ‘You can do these things if you choose Nike.’ 

They even slipped some sneaky advertising into the film What Women Want. One scene features a woman hired by a brand agency to create a campaign for Nike. She imagines what it’s like to be a woman exercising and the struggles they face. And, from the brainstorm, the famous tagline is born. It’s not the truth, but it is entertaining.

The takeaway is that the movie doesn’t mention buying Nike products. But somehow, their brand is on your screen, and you’re emotionally invested.

Engage your audience with videos

Nowadays, people have a short attention span, so you need content that interests your target audience quickly. A great way is to create a video. It doesn’t have to be long, just a few minutes to draw people in and teach them about your branding.

Think about the emotions connected to your product. Let’s go back to hair loss as an example. If your target audience is men in their mid-twenties, you could explore how it feels to lose your hair. It might cause a lack of self-esteem or sadness. 

Show those emotions in your video. For instance, it could feature men looking at their hair loss in the mirror and feeling sad. They start using your product, see new hair growth, and the sadness turns to joy. People think that if they buy your product, they’ll have that outcome. But what it’s really doing is tapping into deeper levels of happiness and self-worth.

Make interesting images

A mistake many ecommerce sites make is taking generic photos of their products. But the truth is, it’s not that interesting. Your images must advertise the lifestyle and emotions of the brand, not just the item. 

The brand, Mr Kipling, sells the idea of homemade baking. Images are usually set in a homely environment, instigating feelings of comfort, nostalgia and safety. The adverts give you a warm fuzzy feeling, and their cakes are a part of that. It’s entertaining to the target audience because they want the lifestyle the picture represents rather than the product Mr Kipling is selling.

Branding entertainment is the way forward

Creating material to entertain your target audience is a cost-effective and sustainable marketing strategy. It builds trust with consumers and taps into their emotions so they care about your brand.

Withbrand is a specialised B2B branding agency that will guide you through developing brand entertainment to hit your goals and establish long-term sustainability. Get in touch today and take advantage of our expertise for a thriving and successful business.

In this guide, we’ll take a deep dive into website form spam, why it’s important to have defences on your website contact signup forms, some ways to keep it at bay, and how a website agency can help.

What is website form spam?

If your website is hit by form spam, your forms have been attacked with malicious intent. When spammers – which can be bots as well as humans – submit form spam, they are including information in links or scripts that can be:

• False
• Inappropriate
• Irrelevant

What type of forms are affected by form spam?

Unfortunately, any type of website form can be affected by form spam. This includes:

• website contact signup forms
• payment forms
• forms for users to leave comments.

How does form spam happen?

The most common spam form submissions include:
Links to the websites of spammers. They do this in the hope of getting links published on your WordPress or other website platform. Whether they end up as comments or elsewhere on your site, it can boost their search engine optimisation (SEO).

Empty offers to website owners, promising to improve their rankings on Google.

Most dangerously, malicious links that can infect your computer with a virus, steal your personal information or restrict site access.

Why should I stop form spam on my brand website?

With all this in mind, you might still be tempted to think spam form is just a minor issue that might not impact you too much. But the damage it causes can be serious.

At best, form spam takes up a lot of your time if you’re constantly working through leads that prove to be fake. Your time is valuable – think of the opportunities you’re missing out on. This distraction can also result in a drop in customer satisfaction. And fake leads can also skew your data, so you could end up wasting time cleaning it up to make it more accurate.

But it’s the security risks caused by malicious links that can really cause havoc. One click on a malicious link can cause real damage to your website. If it results in downtime, it can affect trust in your brand website, and even damage your finances.

Ways to prevent form spam

Fortunately, there are a number of effective methods to keep form spam away from your website.

Hidden form fields

You can use CSS and/or Java to hide form fields from legitimate site visitors and customers. Lots of bots can only read HTML, so if one of those hidden fields is filled, you’ll know it was done automatically by a bot. This is also known as ‘the honeypot method’.

Unfortunately, bots are becoming more sophisticated, and some are now designed to read CSS and Java. But you will catch the less sophisticated spambots, and make it harder in general for them.

CAPTCHA

You’ll have seen CAPTCHAs on many websites – if you’ve been asked to identify and retype ‘squiggly ’letters, you’ve used a CAPTCHA. This is a script that blocks bots from accessing your website. It can be very effective, but it also causes frustration for real visitors, because the letters can sometimes be hard to read. Because of this, it’s a good idea to get the balance right and not overuse CAPTCHAs on your brand website.

Ask questions

Bots can’t answer the most basic questions in forms. So, if you ask a straightforward question such as: ‘What is 2 + 2?’, and then filter the submitted forms to look for the correct answer, you can delete the forms without answers and be rid of the bots.

Blocking

If you notice spam repeatedly coming from specific IP or email addresses, you could block them from being able to access your forms, or flag them as spam so they’re filtered out.

Or, you could reduce bot submissions by setting up your forms so they can only be completed once per user or per session. The only issue there is the danger of rendering forms inaccessible for real visitors if, for example, they need to fill in a contact form more than once.

User authentication

Extra security techniques such as email verification and two-step authentication (2FA) help to stop bots and human spammers. However, there’s danger in overusing such tools, because extra measures can frustrate potential customers, who could ultimately decide to go elsewhere. So, maybe save user authentication for high-value forms, such as trial sign-ups, rather than standard contact forms.

Third-party services and plugins

Website platforms such as Wordpress have lots of spam prevention plugin options – for example, Akismet. This form software automatically checks all comments, and filters out any it recognises as spam. Akismet also offers the option to buy a plan that blocks spam on other forms.

How a website agency can help

Spam is a nuisance that won’t go away. But with the right team of website designers and digital marketing experts on your side, the battle against the spammers gets that much easier. We’re not just about making your website look pretty – function matters as much as form. And we’ll pay attention to your forms, too, ensuring the spammers are kept at bay as much as possible.

Get in touch to find out how WithBrand can help today

You’re probably most aware of ChatGPT. But AI is much more multi-faceted. It’s capable of everything from solving mathematical problems to analysing large quantities of data, and even making medical breakthroughs.

However, most people's interaction with AI, either using it or consuming its output, is through copy and perhaps imagery, video and sound.

Using AI in your marketing and communications output can bring many benefits, but it also carries considerable risks to your brand image and equity. And this is something that needs to be carefully considered before you delve into the depths of artificial intelligence.

In this post, we’re going to explore when using AI can be beneficial, and when the real, human touch is irreplaceable.

What is a brand image & equity?

We’ve already covered how to create lasting brand equity in one of our recent posts, but first, let’s explore what brand image is.

Philip Kotler broadly defines brand image as the concept that explains how and why your customers form their opinions, perceptions and attitudes of your brand based on their experiences and interactions.

The brand image itself is the result of these interactions, such as exposure to advertising and other marketing collateral, your products or services, your website, interactions with your staff, and other touchpoints.

This is not to be confused with brand identity, which focuses on the tangible elements of your brand such as the logo, fonts, colours, taglines and more. Brand identity covers the what, whereas brand image focuses on how your consumers feel about your brand

What is brand equity?

Brand equity can be thought of as the value that comes from both your brand identity and image. It’s the sum of all the different factors that go into making a brand, how it’s perceived and how it’s unique in the market. Moz defines brand equity in four different parts:

• Brand awareness
• Brand associations
• Perceived quality
• Brand loyalty

Moz argue that brand equity has a significant impact on the company’s success:

“Stronger brand equity often means brands can justify higher prices, enjoy customer loyalty, and be protected against competitors.”

What does using AI mean for your brand?

AI can have real, tangible benefits to any brand, especially when it comes to producing marketing collateral at speed and scale.

What’s more, the combination of the latest large language models and using well-planned and detailed prompts can result in genuinely good copy, imagery and audio assets.

However, the overuse of it can negatively affect your brand identity and ultimately, your brand value. Let’s explore some of the pros and cons of using AI as part of your marketing.

The Pros of Using AI

• Can create assets at scale: For blog posts, press releases, marketing collateral, ebooks, product descriptions, page copy, and frankly anything else, these tools can create copy faster (and therefore cheaper) than a human copywriter. But just because you can do this, doesn’t mean you should.
• Can produce consistent output: Due to their nature and the fact they use existing copy to learn from, you can create a prompt that produces results you like, and then replicate it quickly, helping you build a consistent brand voice.
• Can be trained with your TOV: This takes time, but many AI tools can be trained with your own TOV and style guidelines, which helps ensure their output matches your existing branding.
• Can be used for customer service and non-critical copy: Some forms of copy and images that are important for a user’s experience have little impact on your brand.
• Customer service chatbots: Becoming evermore ubiquitous, chatbots are now a vital part of customer service. In many cases, the AI can be used for the initial contact and evaluating the customer’s problem, before handing over to a human operator afterwards.

The Cons of Using AI

• Quantity over quality: One of the largest drawbacks of AI, the technology simply isn’t at a level where it can provide genuinely valuable, insightful and informative content that meets Google’s E.E.A.T guidelines. If you want to publish a recipe for vegetable soup, AI can be great. If you want to provide commentary on a current event or offer real, personal and expert insight on a niche or complicated subject, it leaves a lot to be desired.
• It requires editing: AI content still needs a human to review and edit it to ensure it makes sense, is unique and contains the correct information. This negates some of the benefits of speed and scale that it can bring.
• Loss of the human touch: Unfortunately, even the best AI content can usually be detected by a reader, especially one that’s familiar with your brand. Brands are created for people, by people, and introducing AI into that can reduce the emotional connection between you and your customers.
• Loss of brand identity and value: The use of AI over time can lead to a loss of brand identity and therefore value. If customers don’t believe you are genuine, they will look for a brand that is, and this can have a significant impact on the long-term performance of your organisation.
• Reduced Organic Search visibility: A study carried out by Reboot showed that AI-created content performed worse in Organic Search than content created by a human copywriter. Given how vital SEO is to brand awareness, utilising too much AI content can be a big risk to your business.

Why overuse of AI can impact your brand image

Brand image is something that takes years to build. You’ve put in all the hard work. You’ve curated content that’s based around your brand voice and who you are as a company. If you suddenly use AI for all your brand communications, you’ll lose what makes your brand voice unique and special. Yes, AI can be trained to write in your brand voice, but it still doesn’t understand your customers like you do.

AI clearly has many benefits to organisations in a wide variety of use cases. The genie is out of the bottle, it certainly isn’t going anywhere, and will almost certainly continue to improve over time. Will it ever truly replace human-created copy? Who knows. However, what we do know is that while AI can certainly be effectively utilised for many organisations, becoming over reliant on it could well do more harm than good for your brand.

If you need assistance with your B2B branding then don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ve worked with organisations of all sizes to create effective, memorable brands that succeed.

What is B2B Event Marketing?

B2B (business-to-business) event marketing is an impactful strategy to connect with companies and prospective clients in your industry. It’s an opportunity for you to give businesses solutions to their pain points with products or information and vice versa. Therefore, the key things people are looking for when they attend B2B events are:

1) Industry expertise

2) Samples or ‘try-before-you-buy’

Let’s go over those two points in more detail.

Industry Expertise

When we talk about expertise, we mean sharing knowledge that other businesses or clients find interesting or helpful. It could be creating a workshop that solves a problem they’re experiencing or teaches them something new. 

For example, if you are a tech company, your B2B event might be a training course in basic app development. This helps tech startups expand their business, and they may become repeat customers or point other tech startups in your direction.

Try-before-you-buy

It’s challenging to convince someone to buy your product when they have no idea if you’re good or not. Even Dyson, a highly-regarded brand, allows companies to try their products.

For example, at the 2023 North American Hairstyling Awards, Dyson sponsored the beauty brand Ulta Beauty. This gave Ulta Beauty the opportunity to test drive the Dyson Corrale ™ straightener and Supersonic ™ hair dryer. In exchange, the Dyson hair tools gained exposure to a multitude of professional hair stylists. It’s a win-win. 

This isn’t the only way for prospective clients to sample your services. You can also use giveaways such as raffles or competitions so they can win your products. 

Why You Need B2B Marketing

So, do you really need to engage in B2B marketing events? The answer is - yes. There are multiple reasons why B2B marketing is essential for business growth, development and long-term success.

Promoting brand awareness

Brand awareness is how well-known your brand is and whether people know your company exists. When you run or attend B2B event marketing, you put your brand on the map with other businesses. This means that when they are looking for the services you provide, they’re aware that you’re an option.

Strengthening your brand character

A brand character embodies your brand’s personality, like the Duracell Bunny or The Michelin Man. They help you stand out from the crowd and make your business more recognisable. B2B marketing events are a chance to develop your brand character by acquiring knowledge and feedback about brand characters from other companies in your industry. 

Improving your brand design

B2B events are a hub of inspiration and ideas, ideal for gaining branding tips from other businesses. If you are at a tradeshow and someone else’s stall stands out, ask yourself, why? What is it that makes the brand design appealing and memorable? What do you like about it, what would you improve on, and what are the takeaways to take your branding to the next level?

Networking with other brands

B2B event marketing isn’t just about pitching your products and squashing the competition (although that’s an added bonus). It’s a space to create genuine and authentic relationships with other people so they can get to know you and why you’re worthwhile.

Networking is crucial to gain exposure within your industry. It creates valuable connections and informs people about your company without coming across as ‘salesy.’ You can also enhance your knowledge and discover products that advance your business for greater success.

Finding your niche against competing brands

Standing out is one of the toughest challenges, especially in an oversaturated market. What makes you different? Why should consumers buy from you instead of someone else? An easy way to find out is by scoping out the competition at B2B events. Not only does this allow you to identify gaps in the market, but it helps narrow down your target audience.

Generating leads

Curating leads to cold customers through social media and online advertisement is hard work. It takes a lot of grafting to make yourself known, build a relationship and entice new sales. But B2B marketing allows you to communicate in a more intimate setting within your industry - for example, through webinars or trade shows. This can set up leads to sell your services and is more rewarding for less effort.

B2B Event Marketing Ideas

We’ve compiled a quick list of B2B event marketing ideas you can set up to improve brand awareness, create connections and generate leads.

• Organise a networking event - Networking increases your visibility and forges connections with other businesses in your industry. You can exchange knowledge and share contact details for future communication.

• Run a webinar - Online or website seminars (webinars) allow you to share your expertise with prospective clients. They are budget-friendly and accessible worldwide, and people can learn from the comfort of their homes.

• Create a product launch - There is no better way to share your industry innovation than turning your launches into a B2B marketing event. You can generate a VIP experience by making it invite-only and allowing early access or discounts.

• Host an exhibition - An exhibition or trade show is a space for industry-related businesses to showcase their services. Make your exhibition stand out with cohesive branding and high-quality resources, and ensure you engage with other companies.

• Hold a conference - Bringing keynote speakers to a conference will create a memorable and valuable B2B event. It’s an impactful tactic to build trust in your industry and share your mission and brand values.

Organising or attending B2B brand events is a crucial marketing strategy. They help you interact and support other businesses, build brand awareness, and broaden your outreach. The events also offer solutions to companies within your industry by sharing knowledge or providing samples of services.

Withbrand is a specialised B2B brand agency that will guide you through B2B event marketing to hit your goals and establish long-term sustainability. Get in touch today and take advantage of our expertise for a thriving and successful business.

We’ve already explored why a website is essential for your business, but to get a polished, professional and functional site, you’ll need the right tools for the job. As the guys with the expertise, we turn to a specific tool to get the job done, and it’s the most popular web platform in the world… WordPress. We use it as the base package to build all our client’s websites, and here’s why:

Why Choose WordPress for Your Business Website?

WordPress is a versatile and proven platform for building business or company websites for several reasons:

• User-Friendly Customisation: WordPress is known for its user-friendly back end, which makes it accessible for all members of your team, regardless of their knowledge level. You don't need to be a coding expert to create and manage a WordPress website that meets your and your customers’ needs.
• SEO: WordPress is considered a good platform from an SEO perspective as it provides clean code, customisable URLs, and many trusted, high-quality SEO plugins that can improve a website's visibility in search engines.
• Content Management: WordPress began as a blogging platform, and it excels at managing and publishing content. Its ease of use means that virtually everybody within an organisation can add, edit, and organise text, images, videos, and other media.
• Scalability: Whether you're a small startup or a large corporation, WordPress can scale to meet your needs. You can start with a basic website and expand its features as your business grows. In fact, some of the largest websites in the world are built on the platform.
• E-Commerce Integration: WordPress can integrate with a wide range of e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce, Shopify, Big Commerce and more.
• Security: While no platform is completely immune to security threats, WordPress is actively maintained, and security updates are regularly released to address vulnerabilities. 
• Mobile Responsiveness: Many WordPress themes are designed to be mobile-responsive out of the box, ensuring your website both looks great and functions properly on all devices, from smartphones to tablets and desktops. This is essential with Google’s mobile-first indexing.
• Cost-Effective: The WordPress core software is free, which can be a significant bonus if you’re a small organisation. You may need to pay for hosting, themes, or plugins, but the lack of ongoing cost is a real benefit.
• Analytics Integration: You can integrate various analytics tools and plugins with WordPress to track your website's performance and user behaviour so you can make data-driven business decisions.
• Third-Party Integration: WordPress can integrate with various third-party services and apps, making it easier to connect with social media, email marketing platforms, payment gateways, CRMs and more.

What WordPress components do we use to build your website?

We use WordPress as our Base website design package for all the reasons we’ve outlined above, but how does that work in the real world? Our base package has everything you need to form the foundation building blocks of your website, including:

• Drag-and-drop page builder: This enables anybody to easily create pages from scratch, even beginners. It does what it says on the tin. No coding is needed; just find the page element you want from the library and drag it into place.
• Akeeba Backup system: Sometimes, the worst happens to your site, and it goes down. Akeeba is a proven backup engine to safeguard your website from downtime and allows you to get it back up and running quickly. 
• Form creation: We use components that can create a vast array of forms, from basic ones with a few simple fields to multi-page forms with dynamic content.
• Dynamic landing pages: Rather than having a single landing page for every customer segment, we can set up dynamic CPC landing pages that change based on different search terms. This ensures that the user gets the best possible content, depending on the search term used. This allows you to customise your messaging based on the customer and their stage in the conversion funnel.  
• SEO: SEO is vital to any organisation in 2023. Our WordPress base lets you build and optimise pages with easy-to-manage metatags, structured data for sitemap links, image carousels, updated body copy, and the text used in the SERPs.
• Sitemap creation: To keep things streamlined and ensure any updates are noticed quickly, our website base creates and submits your sitemap to Google Search Console to be indexed as quickly as possible.
• Open Graph Tag Management: Customise and enhance posts to be shared on social media. Easily edit titles and descriptions and choose images that are platform-specific to share on any channel.

Still unsure what you need?

While WordPress offers numerous advantages, and we wouldn’t use it if we didn’t rate it, it's essential to note that the success of your business website depends on factors beyond the platform itself. 

Your website's performance, security, and user experience also rely on your hosting provider, chosen themes and plugins, content quality, and ongoing maintenance. It's crucial to plan and manage your WordPress site effectively to achieve the best results for your business.

If you need any advice on ensuring you get the best website for your organisation, contact us now and we can talk you through your options. For example, you may be unsure whether a custom-built or off-the-shelf site is better for you or if you should undertake a rebrand at the same time. Whether it’s a simple or complex site, we’re experts in creating websites that stand out, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

As a B2B branding agency, we know the implications of quality branding. Creating a lasting brand means learning what brand equity and your value are, their importance and the techniques you can use to amplify that message online and offline.

What is brand equity, and why is it important?

Brand equity is the unique value attached to a brand and its products based on the consumer’s perception and trust in that brand. 

This value helps your brand stand out and keeps consumers engaged in buying your products or services. Brand equity stems from many components which work together to create that trusted image, including brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand identity, perceived quality and positive brand associations. 

By utilising a marketing strategy to focus on these varied components, you can create effective results to set you apart from competitors and make you stand out, aiding business growth. This recent study states, ‘brand equity is a final outcome variable, which is influenced by multiple constructs’, clarifying the route to success with multiple components. 

With expertise in branding as a B2B branding agency, we’ve shared our top tips and tricks to create lasting brand equity.

Create a consistent content marketing strategy through storytelling

Quality content marketing creates a lasting impact for your customers and brand. The key to writing good content is focusing on storytelling and authenticity, providing value and interest in what you’re saying as a brand. Creating a streamlined content marketing strategy with the purpose of storytelling adds a human element to your brand and aids customer experience when learning more about your expertise.

The focus on storytelling goes hand in hand with the emphasis on brand equity as both help build a trusted brand presence, enabling you to deliver a killer content marketing strategy.

Provide customers with a reason to follow your business

Every business is different as we all have personal insight, expertise and experience to share with our audience and customer base. This insight and who your company is provides value to the customers and gives them a reason to follow your business, purchase your products or services and gain trust. You should invest in showcasing that value through brand-building activities and creating a personal brand presence online.

Also, how you measure this ‘value’ will help guide your brand-building strategy further. Rather than focusing on ROI and clicks, look at organic content and what content people engage with to see the results of your brand-building. Conversions about your brand online are another aspect to help guide your message online and ensure you’re sharing your value authentically and efficiently.

Ensure branding is consistent across all means

A consistent brand experience is what builds trust and helps customers return again and again to you. This is as important as the quality of your product or service because it’s about the customer’s perception of you. You should look at aligning all your marketing, such as messaging, graphics, branding design, tone of voice and how you show up online. Your audience wants to know what to expect from you.

It’s about giving to your audience to help them gain insight and trust from you, for them to want to give back. Think of brand equity like a relationship; it needs to be about give and take with consistency in every form.

Promote your brand authentically

Being consistent is powerful and goes in hand with authenticity. As a brand, you want to show up with the message of who and what you are to build trust. But you must tell that story authentically in everything you do, from blog posts and Instagram stories to how you communicate with customers. The same authentic story and message should align with your marketing strategy overall. A great way to ensure everything is streamlined and you have a distinctive tone of voice is to create a brand guidelines document that all team members have access to.

Educate your team about the importance of brand building and equity

It's important to know the significance of brand equity in marketing and convey that to your team. After all, many brands expand with employees or freelancers over time, and it’s down to the entire team to carry the consistent and authentic brand message.

Spend time investing in educating your team about the brand equity meaning and how you can create a lasting impact on your customers through implementation.

Continue the learning process

Nailing brand equity and presenting your brand online effectively in the first few months isn’t likely, as it’s a constant learning process - and takes time to build up. It’s important to note that, like any marketing strategy, brand equity takes time to create an impact and see the results you’re striving for. 

Building your brand is a constant learning process. Through creating content, you will see what resonates with your audience the most and how best to present yourself online. And you can learn from all of this to amplify your brand better and give you effective results and lasting brand equity. 

Never stop learning. Learning and evolving through industry changes and current trends will help adapt your brand to modern times, as well as maintain your authentic message.

Are you looking for some branding tips? Or are you keen to learn more about brand equity and how you can make a lasting impact? We’re a B2B branding agency supporting your marketing teams - contact us today for help and advice. We’d love to talk to you.

Many marketing professionals and brand managers wonder how to build brand awareness effectively and sustainably. Fortunately, some proven methods exist to create a brand awareness strategy that will put you front and centre of your customers’ thoughts when they need your products and services. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the best ways to build brand visibility, and why it’s essential.

Why is Brand Awareness Important?

Brand awareness can be considered a more in-depth cousin of brand recognition. Good brand recognition is when somebody recognises your brand instantly from your logo or other factors. MyNewsDesk describes this as:

“Brand recognition represents how well consumers can correctly identify your brand based on visual and auditory factors such as logo, colours, music, sounds, packaging, etc., without hearing the brand name.”

For example:

All of these are undoubtedly instantly recognisable, but brand awareness goes further than that. Brand awareness incorporates your values, and your audience, and evokes an emotional response when somebody sees it. The above organisations are also great examples of very strong brand awareness.

When we see the Nike tick we think of professional athletes, young and cool customers, and cutting-edge sports equipment. Likewise, the Apple logo evokes feelings of sleek design, new technology and a professional user base. What’s more, strong brand awareness creates trust in your customers and increases the effectiveness of any marketing activity you do. In turn, this helps increase sales and referrals from your existing customers. Finally, it also makes them less likely to look to your competitors when they come to make another purchase.

Put simply, brand recognition and brand awareness are crucial to long-term success.

How to Increase Brand Awareness

There are several tried and tested ways to improve your brand awareness, regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C organisation. So let’s get started.

1. Create a Brand Awareness Strategy. This is always where you should start before undertaking any tactics to increase brand awareness, otherwise, you run the risk of wasting time and money with tactics that don’t suit your brand or audience. To understand how to achieve your goals, you’ll need to define:

   • Your values and messaging
   • Your target audience
   • Your vision
   • Your aims and objectives
   • Your brand guidelines

   Loosely, these are considered your brand identity. We’ve also already written about the core elements of a B2B marketing strategy, which is a great resource if you want more in-depth information.

2. Ensure everything you put out is consistent across all channels. Update your website and your marketing assets, and ensure that everything that goes out on social, via email, via video or on any other channel is consistent with your branding and key values. This will ensure users are reinforced with the same messaging and build a consistent picture in their heads.

3. Tell a story. People like stories. They create a narrative and put a human touch to your brand that people can relate to. Many people are aware that Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage, or that before becoming an electronics behemoth, Samsung was a grocery store in Taegu, Korea. Communicate why your organisation started, how and why you solve people’s problems, or frankly, anything that gets people interested. The only caveat is that it has to be true.

4. Content Creation & PR. If you have a story to tell, the way to do it is to get it in front of people. Create content that will resonate with your audience, in a format that they will consume. Depending on your industry this could be short or long-form text content, podcasts, videos, blog posts, social media posts and more.

   It’s important to understand where your customers spend their time online, which publications they read, who they engage with and the types of content and subject matter that seem to resonate. This way, you can give yourself the best chance of building brand awareness with them. An effective PR strategy to engage with relevant industry publications and influencers will further increase trust.

5. Social Media Activity & Monitoring. Social media is one of the best places to increase brand awareness and presence. We’ve discussed posting the right content, in the right places, to the right people but what does that mean? You need to ensure you:

   • Choose the right platform(s)
   • Be personal and not too salesy
   • Share resources that make people trust you
   • Tell your story
   • Make it shareable
   • Engage with influencers and notable industry figures
   • Interact with your audience
     
     

Building brand awareness can take time, effort and patience, but it’s a long term strategy that will ultimately pay dividends. By creating strong brand awareness, your customers are more likely to remain loyal for longer. Creating an effective brand strategy is not always easy, and engaging with a branding agency throughout the process can help increase its effectiveness and efficiency.

At Withbrand, we have years of experience creating brand strategies for B2B clients across the tech and IT sectors. Don’t hesitate to contact us today to discuss your requirements, and how we can work together to achieve your goals.

However, by making the creation of great assets much easier for a wide range of staff, it’s more important than ever that brand guidelines are followed and are consistent, regardless of who has created the asset. This is where Canva Brand Hubs come in. In this guide, we will discuss what Canva Brand Hubs are, why they’re useful, and how we can help set one up for your needs.

What are Brand Hubs?

A brand hub is a place where organisations, design teams, freelancers or anybody working on branding keep their assets. This allows easy collaboration and effective version control, as well as provides an accessible, central hub to keep everything organised and in one place. There are plenty of different approaches to this, some companies use a dedicated folder on a cloud service like Google Drive, Sharepoint, Adobe Creative Cloud or WorkVivo. Some also set up folders on their own company networks and services.

Generally, organisations keep the following documents, files and assets within their brand hubs:

• Brand Guidelines
• Tone of Voice Documents
• Logos
• Fonts
• Brand Colour Palettes
• Live & Completed Projects

However, Canva adds another layer of usability that benefits a range of organisations and marketing teams.

What are Canva Brand Hubs?

Canva brand hubs contain everything we’ve outlined above, but they also allow you to create templates and brand kits from your colours, fonts, logos and other assets. When a user is in the editor, they can work directly on a template and apply a brand kit to work with. This makes creating great graphics and videos even easier and ensures everything is consistent.

Whether it’s creating assets for social posts, graphics for blog posts or adding the finishing touches to downloadable resources, using brand kits and templates means less time is spent to begin with, and there should be fewer rounds of amendments. Brand managers and teams can be confident that their guidelines are being followed, and efficiency is increased all-round.

Canva themselves say:

“Set up by your team admins, but accessible to everyone, your team is empowered to create on-brand, standout content. No more sending teams to outdated folders or multiple platforms to download the design assets they need.”

Moving on to discuss increasing efficiency, they add:

“We know the right design ingredients are only half of the equation. Give your team instructions right where they need them by adding written guidelines to your Brand Kit, which appears in the editor as they design.

Forget about needing a 20-page PDF for your brand guidelines. With Canva’s new contextual guidelines, you'll empower everyone to design within the lines – and have more control over how your brand shows up in the world.”

What’s more, multiple brand kits can be set up for different purposes. Maybe your brand has different divisions or products that have slightly different branding. Or perhaps it’s a creative choice to adopt different branding for different projects. Setting up a brand hub can be a worthwhile investment of time and effort to improve your asset creation process. Fortunately, here at Withbrand we’ve helped many of our clients set up their own Canva Brand Hubs with assets, guidelines and templates.

How to Set Up a Canva Brand Hub

At Withbrand, we love our clients to take charge of their branding efforts. We believe that sharing our expertise and insight makes for more productive, longer relationships that benefit everyone.

It’s important to note that the brand hubs are only available to Pro or Teams users of Canva i.e. those who pay, and it is not available to free users. However, if you fall into one of these categories, we highly recommend making the most of this functionality.

You can find your Brand Hub in the side panel of the homepage. In this section, you’ll be able to set up your Brand Kits, Guidelines and Templates. For the brand kits, click on ‘Create’ and follow the steps to add logos, assets, fonts and colours. Under the Templates section, you’ll also be able to upload or create templates for your team to use, as well as implement Brand Controls to ensure everything is consistent.

There’s nothing to stop you from doing this yourself, but we’re also able to set everything up for you. As part of our work, we’ll almost certainly have created brand guidelines, various assets and templates already. In this case, we can set up your Canva hub, as well as provide instructions and guidelines for you and your staff to utilise. We can also provide guidance on how to create fantastic graphics and assets to use on your socials, your website and as part of any offline marketing activity.

For example, we created the templates below for our client More4Apps. They’re used on their social channels to advertise upcoming webinars.

Contact us today to find out more about how we can empower you to make the most of your Canva subscription and start creating killer graphics and assets. No more inefficient processes and off-brand graphics, just great images for successful campaigns.

Whether you’re an existing partner of ours, you’re looking for advice on a fresh rebrand, or need an injection of creativity, we’re always keen to talk. Explore our previous work, or take time to understand our creative approach.

The nature of digital industries means that exceptional talent doesn’t have to be bound by a location, and many agencies opt for locations outside of major cities for cost and quality-of-life reasons. The shift in working patterns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this even more. 

These factors meant that agencies outside of big cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow no longer had the same problems attracting top-level talent. To take London as an example, as people moved away from the city, commuter areas such as Reading, St Albans, Guildford, Woking, Milton Keynes and many more benefitted. 

Choosing a branding agency in London can have many advantages when it comes to convenience too. Face-to-face meetings and catch-ups become a lot simpler, and it can often feel better to employ an agency that’s in the thick of it. 

However, in 2023, that simply isn’t the case anymore. If you’re thinking of employing a branding agency in or around London, let’s explore what to look for.

What to look for in a branding agency near London

A brand design agency needs to be an expert in their field and also have a proven track record of helping clients within your industry or niche, regardless of where they’re located. Typically, your branding agency will help you create a cohesive, distinctive identity across things like:

• Your logo
• Brand messaging
• The tone of voice
• Brand proposition
• Style guide

However, creating a strong brand identity for a fashion label, for example, will require a different skillset and knowledge base than, say, a financial services organisation. So what about us? At Withbrand, we work exclusively with B2B software businesses. That means that potential clients within that sector can have good confidence we’re the right fit for them… and that’s far more important than having a physical presence in a major city. For more information, we’ve previously covered what brand agencies do in detail.

That said, many organisations do like to have a personal connection with their agencies. If you are choosing a branding agency outside of London, it’s important they’re willing to travel to you or are within a convenient distance for you to get to them. Any agencies within one of those commuter towns we mentioned earlier should have good transport links to the capital. Finally, most modern agencies can and should have access to a wide range of collaboration suites and communication tools that make remote working a doddle.

At Withbrand, our blog is full of useful content to help you understand some of the concepts behind branding and why they’re important. Check out some of our most recent entries:

• What is brand coherence, and why do I need to know about it
• An introduction to all things brand immersion
• What are the critical elements of a B2B Marketing Strategy?
• What is a Brand Character & Why Should You Develop One?
• Google Analytics 4: What Will Analytics Look Like in 2023?

In this post, we’re going to discuss the fundamentals of B2B branding. We’re then going to outline the 5 vital qualities of a branding agency you need to look for. So let’s get started.

What is B2B Branding?

B2B branding is all about building connections with your users and presenting a consistent identity at every touchpoint. Overall, it’s about creating an experience. The experience helps your potential customers along their buying journey, and ultimately creates a lasting relationship.;

Although B2B and B2C branding share some similarities, there are some key differences. Understanding these differences will be vital to your success or failure in building a successful B2B brand. Firstly, B2B purchases are often much more considered and driven by need, logic, reason and price.

Customers will likely need to see facts and numbers, statistics, and to prove a business case. Although emotion does come into it, it’s often the fear of making a bad decision that drives behaviour. This is the opposite in many B2C transactions where emotions such as attraction, desire and status can be the driving force.

Also, many B2B purchases require the input and sign-off of multiple stakeholders, each with varying responsibilities, expertise and requirements. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a strong and recognisable brand image that will allow you to forge relationships across businesses. This means you’ll need to create an overarching brand strategy. To begin, you need to determine who you are as a brand and what it is that sets you apart.

A B2B branding agency will help you define your brand position and create a strategy, but what should you look for from your branding agency?

What to look for from a B2B Branding Agency

Do they practice what they preach?

Sounds obvious right? One of the first things to look for in a branding agency is to see if their own brand is strong and if they appear to walk the walk. After all, a branding agency is a B2B business itself, and they should be the best at it. Is their brand proposition clear? Do they communicate their mission and their values well? Do they have a distinctive brand personality? Do they appear to understand the challenges that a B2B business faces? Do they convince you that they can help your organisation overcome those challenges with a strong strategy and relevant tactics?

B2B branding encapsulates everything from visual and audio design, copy, imagery and video, UX and much more. If a branding agency puts the time, thought and effort into their own branding then you can have good confidence they will for you.

Understanding, Empathy & Curiosity

Both are vital to a successful partnership and to ensuring your branding agency delivers on your objectives. As we’ve discussed, B2B branding is not the same as B2C, and your agency needs to understand the different challenges that this brings.

At the beginning of the buying journey, when you’re reviewing websites and consuming marketing collateral, any agencies you look at need to demonstrate that they understand your situation and the challenges you face.

As you progress down the purchasing funnel and have discovery calls and meetings, they need to give you confidence. Two traits that all great branding agencies share are empathy and curiosity. Empathy means demonstrating that they understand your challenges and apprehensions, and are keen to work with you to solve your problems. Many agencies can adopt a we know best approach which demonstrates a lack of empathy. Although they are the experts, you still know your business or organisation better than them, and they should be keen to find out as much as possible.

Which brings us to curiosity. Curiosity is a vital quality in any B2B branding agency. Through initial conversations and working together, a good agency should ask you lots of questions about your organisation. They should be actively finding new ways to convey your messaging, for new tactics to reach your audience and identifying new ways to achieve your shared goals.

Proven Track Record & Relevant Portfolio

Any B2B branding agency you choose should also have a proven track record with a relevant portfolio of previous results. The nature of B2B branding means that even within similar niches, the differing range of products, services and audiences means that you need to engage an agency that has proven themselves with similar organisations to yours.

For example, a company that sells general IT equipment to organisations will likely be appealing to different audiences, via different channels, than a marketing SaaS product, despite ostensibly being within a similar sector.

A B2B branding agency that has a track record of helping businesses and organisations like yours is much more likely to be able to replicate that with you. Ask them for previous results, case studies and testimonials. A good agency will also be happy for you to talk directly to previous, satisfied customers.

At Withbrand, we offer a full range of B2B brand services to organisations of all sizes. Whether you need a full brand strategy, website or app design, UX, copywriting, or digital marketing, we’re happy to help.

Learn why our satisfied customers choose to work with us, and explore our range of previous B2B branding work. If you need B2B branding services, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.

Depending on your industry, B2B marketing can require different tactics in order to reach your goals. Fortunately, we can learn from plenty of examples of B2B marketing done right. In this post, we’re going to look at some of the key elements of creating a B2B marketing strategy.

The 4 Elements of B2B Marketing Strategy

We’ve broken down a marketing strategy into four distinct steps that we like to call Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Having a clear plan of action and understanding what success looks like are core elements that need to be considered from the outset, but there are other factors.

• Earth: Understand Your Audience - It’s essential to understand who you are targeting to convert. Without this, you won’t see any success - everything is built on it.
• Wind: Set Targets and Measure for Success - The wind blows you in the direction of your targets, but you first need to know what they are. What do you want to achieve? And how are you going to measure it? 
• Fire: Plan, Plan, Plan - Your plan is like the fire that starts the whole process. Here, you’re getting your wood ready to light the spark. Create a project plan to ensure that everybody knows what they’re doing, and when they need to do it. Plan periodic reviews to check progress against target(s). 
• Water: Implementation - Everything needs water to grow. Whether it’s creating content, working with PR teams, managing social profiles or anything else, this is where all your previous planning comes together and bursts into life.

Now, let’s look into each step in a bit more detail.

Understanding Your Audience

We said earlier that your audience is like the earth that everything is built on. It’s essential to any business, but you’d be amazed at the number of organisations that either don’t know enough about their customers or have outdated information. Your audience is the earth beneath your feet, and if you don’t truly understand your customers and who you are targeting, how will you position your organisation as the solution to their problem?

All your marketing activity must resonate with your audience and encourage them along the buying journey. HubSpot sums it up perfectly:

“The biggest determinant of effective marketing, […] is your audience.

If you’re not properly targeting your buyer persona, your promotions and advertisements will likely fall on deaf ears. You might as well not be marketing at all. Marketing to businesses is very different from marketing to individual consumers. That’s why an entirely different marketing method — B2B marketing — exists”

You need to understand the following about your customers:

• Who they are
  • Job position(s)
  • Experience level(s)
• Their triggers
• Their challenges and pain points
• Their needs and aspirations
• Their expectations of a product or service like yours

However, unlike B2C, the B2B sales journey often takes longer and can include multiple stakeholders with different requirements. This is why simple demographics aren’t enough and you need to understand the why behind people’s needs.

Set Targets & KPIs

Setting a goal is vital to any marketing campaign and B2B is no different. Setting clear targets with KPIs ensures that everyone knows what they're aiming for, and allows you to allocate and align resources to achieve them.

It’s important that your marketing goals feed into your overall business objectives. Examples of B2B marketing goals can include:

• Increase brand awareness
• Generate press coverage
• Increase site traffic
• Lead generation
• Improve conversion rates and/or increase sales

Once you’ve decided your marketing goals, you need to determine how you are going to measure success. The KPIs you choose will vary depending on your choices. For example, to increase brand awareness, you may choose metrics such as press mentions, links gained, impressions, online mentions, or social engagement. If your marketing is aimed at increasing leads or sales, then you may wish to measure website traffic, leads, conversion rates, sales, AOV or customer lifetime value.

It’s clear that these different types of targets will require different tactics to achieve. Put simply, it’s essential to know what you’re trying to achieve so you can decide how you’re going to do it.

Create a Plan and Stick To It

Now you understand who you’re targeting and what success looks like, it’s time to focus on how you will do it. This means creating a project plan with deliverables, timelines and responsibilities. 

As a side note, it’s rare that time spent planning is ever wasted, so don’t skimp or rush this bit. Think of the 6Ps: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.

Your plan is your framework for ensuring that you hit your various milestones and that nothing gets missed. Typically, a B2B marketing plan would include:

• Content creation required
  • Blog posts
  • Social posts
  • Press releases
  • Articles
  • Imagery, video & audio
• Publishing dates
• Promotional activity
  • When and where things will be posted on social
  • Press release platforms
  • Outreach
• Periodic review meetings

There are many ways to present this information, but given the need for multiple people to have access, a shared document is usually the best bet. Typical ways to present this include calendars, Gantt charts or kanban boards. For small teams with limited resources, a shared Excel or Google sheet might be enough. 

However, tools such as Trello, Airtable, Zoho, Monday.com, Jira and Asana are very popular and can support multiple users.

Create, Create, Create

The fun bit. Content is what makes any marketing campaign succeed or fail. It’s responsible for attracting your customers, encouraging them to convert and eventually become repeat purchasers. Here, you’re adding nourishing water that allows your business to grow.

However, adopting a ‘build it and they will come’ approach isn’t enough in 2023. Research carried out by the Content Marketing Institute in 2019 demonstrated that the most successful marketers pay a lot of attention to their customers’ needs. For example, 90% prioritise the audience’s informational needs over their own messaging. While 77% create content for a specific stage in the conversion funnel, 81% prioritise delivering the right content for the right audience, at the right time and on the right platform.

Choosing the type of content will depend on your stated goals, but a typical mix could include video, audio, written content, print/offsite content, emails and images. The same research by the Content Marketing Institute found that blog posts and case studies were often the most effective for B2B uses, largely due to their ease of creation, consumption, and shareability.

It’s clear that getting your B2B marketing strategy right is essential to give yourself the best chance of success. Rather than rush things, plan ahead and consider your options. Set clear, realistic targets and ensure everybody on the team is bought in. Think about what your audience needs and how you can solve their problems. Do it well, and the results should follow.

Running branded PPC campaigns can have several significant benefits to your brand, such as connecting with relevant customers and increasing conversions. If you’ve not tested it before, you’re missing out on the chance to get your brand name out there.

In this guide, we’re going to cover what a branded PPC campaign is and run through some of the reasons why you should start running one. You’ll discover there are some compelling reasons to give it a try.

So, let’s get into how, and why it works.

What is brand bidding?

Put simply, a branded PPC campaign is when you bid on your own branded keywords. This can also include some of your product names. It might seem a bit of a unique tactic if you’re used to bidding on general keywords, but it does pay off. 

Solomon Timothy defines brand PPC as “A campaign [that] uses keywords and terms that include your company’s name or other brand elements.”

For example, if Nike uses that term in their paid search campaigns, that would be branded PPC. Additionally, if they were to use ‘Air Jordan’ or ‘Air Force 1’ that would also be considered branded search, despite not using the true brand name.

Some businesses and paid search professionals argue that bidding on your own keywords is a poor way to use your paid media budget. After all, you’re highly likely to rank first organically for your brand name and hero products anyway. Spending money at a click you’d likely get anyway doesn’t always seem like a smart idea. However, that’s the wrong way of thinking. Let’s explore why you should be bidding on branded keywords.

Dominate the SERPs & Increase Traffic

Even if you do rank organically at the top of the SERPs for your branded keywords, there are still several places for paid ads that appear above you. By bidding on your branded terms, you are also securing these valuable, above-the-fold spots. This will give you complete dominance of the top of the page, and give you the best chance to encourage the user to click through.

An additional advantage? It ensures that your competitors can’t compete on your branded keywords and potentially steal your customers. It’s a win-win. Finally, bidding on your brand terms will also allow you to outperform any affiliates or distributors you use. For example, if you sell refrigerators directly to consumers via your website but also sell your products via other sites such as Argos, AO or Amazon, you give yourself the best chance to capture these valuable customers.

Cheap Keywords & Increased Conversion Rates

One of the best reasons for bidding on branded keywords is that they are cheap. Because they have comparatively low levels of competition, you can expect to pay a lower CPC than if you were bidding on generic commercial terms. In fact, branded keywords are often the cheapest form of online traffic.

What’s more, people searching for branded keywords are much further along the purchase funnel than those using generic ones and have likely decided on the brand they want to buy. This means that branded PPC campaigns often have much higher conversion rates. To use the refrigerator example again, somebody searching for a ‘bosch fridge freezer’ is much more likely to click on the Bosch website and go on to convert than someone who searches ‘fridge freezer’ and is presented with multiple brands.

Boost Your Quality Score

Creating a branded PPC campaign is one of the best ways to boost your overall quality score on the account, improving your other PPC campaigns at the same time. Which keywords you choose have a positive impact on your quality score, and branded terms are by definition, high quality and relevant.

Control Your Messaging 

A well-executed branded PPC campaign gives you more control over your tone and messaging. In addition to your page titles and meta descriptions in your organic results, you also get the opportunity to create your ad copy and communicate your key messages and attract your ideal customer.

Branded campaigns offer you to immediately and effectively change your messaging based on current trends, upcoming product launches and audience insights. By changing your site links, you can also direct users to wherever you want with ease. 

Your branded keyword campaign are a great place to A/B test and experiment on your account without risking other, core campaigns. Find out what does and doesn’t work, and roll it out across your entire account. 

Plug Organic Keyword Gaps & Build Brand Awareness

Do you have product lines or categories of your site that don’t get as much traffic as you’d like? Or have you created a new section that you want to boost? Bidding on these branded keywords is a great way to give them a helping hand and plug any gaps.

SEO and other organic search tactics can take a while to see effects and PPC can help bridge the gap before your organic traffic starts picking up. This also applies if you are a new company looking for growth. 

In some cases, you might not rank organically for your brand name yet which may be impacting any other marketing you do as people search and can't find you. By bidding on your brand terms, you are guaranteeing the top spot of the SERPs until you become big enough to claim those organic spots.

As we’ve explored, branded PPC campaigns come with plenty of benefits, and really, it’s a no-brainer to free up some budget to start experimenting with them. They’re a great way to strengthen your brand and increase conversions. Contact us today to discuss your branding needs, and how we can help you with your branded search.

Hubspot defines a brand character as:

“The personality of your company. It's how you want people to perceive your business, and it should be reflected in everything from your marketing materials to how you answer customer service calls.

[It] should be consistent across all channels and unique to your company. It's important to avoid generic characters, as these will be forgettable. A bland brand character won't help you stand out from the competition. Think of your brand character as the actor who plays your company's role. They should be able to embody all the values and attributes that you want people to associate with your business.”

We can attest to the importance of building a brand character for your organisation. We’ve recently devised Excella for our client More4apps. Created to bring some character, charm, and personality to the service, she's the Excel spreadsheet wizard who's won her time back by using More4apps spreadsheets for Oracle ERP, just like students who seek a seriöse Ghostwriting Agentur für Studierende to bring personality and precision to their academic work. For those needing reliable support, a hausarbeit-schreiben-lassen.de - zuverlässige Ghostwriting Agentur offers the same dedication, while understanding the günstige Ghostwriter Preise helps students plan their budget effectively. For more comprehensive projects, services like Hausarbeit schreiben lassen für Studierende ensure that every academic task is handled with the same care and consistency as a well-crafted brand character.

Some of the most memorable brand characters include:

• The Michelin Man
• Ronald McDonald
• The Duracell Bunny
• Compare The Meerkat (Aleksandr Orlov)
• Go Compare (Gio Compario)

What’s more, they seem to work. In 2020, IPSOS found that brand characters can make a video ad up to 6x more memorable compared to the logo alone and up to 2x as memorable as using a celebrity. Powerful stuff.

In this post, we’re going to explore brand characters and how you can utilise one in your marketing and branding.

Brand Personality vs Brand Character

Although linked, brand personality and your brand character are not the same things. Your brand personality is your overall look, feel, tone and values. Your brand character is what you create in order to demonstrate your brand personality. The character has the same values and characteristics but also has something else.

In the Duracell example, the brand personality is of batteries that are reliable, hold their charge, and are always there when you need them. The Duracell bunny demonstrates this by being high energy, running everywhere and outlasting the competition.

Brand Character(istics)

There can be many different qualities and characteristics of your brand character, depending on what message you want to convey. Some of the most common include:

• Friendliness - Most brands want to convey themselves as friendly, approachable, and someone their customers would want to talk to.
• Trustworthiness - Like friendliness, expertise is often a desirable brand characteristic. Customers want to be able to trust and rely on a brand for good service and accurate information.
• Expertise & Competence - Sometimes considered an extension of trust, customers want a brand to know their industry and be on hand to provide support, guidance and advice.

Other popular brand values could include enthusiasm, style, technological advancement, sincerity, sophistication, ruggedness, strength and even community.

Why Are Brand Characters Important?

One of the main ways that brand characters are important is that they give a focal point and continuity across all marketing activities. They can help to enhance your message and reinforce other elements of your brand identity such as logo, tagline and colour palette. They are also used across other marketing collateral such as websites, offline and print resources, social media posts and videos.

What’s more, they can also help guide other elements of your brand and marketing strategy. For instance, they can inform your brand guidelines which in turn help develop the look of the website, product packaging, typefaces and more. Finally, your brand character provides a recognisable and relatable face to your brand that fosters loyalty and turns customers into advocates.

How to Develop a Brand Character

There are several steps to creating a strong brand character, both through the planning and delivery phases. We’ve outlined them below:

1. The first step is to understand and define the values you want your brand character to convey. This means determining what your brand stands for, your brand personality, your core values, and how you want the public to react to your character. You may have more than a single character can realistically portray, so select 2-4 core values.
   
   
2. Now you can start brainstorming the specific personality traits you want your character to portray, and start the design process. There’s no right or wrong here, and you can use photos, graphics, animations, videos and anything else you can think of. The main thing is that they’re appealing and memorable.
   
   
3. Gather feedback from other members of your organisation to ensure complete buy-in. After this, create a plan to update any assets and create your marketing collateral for launch. Amend your brand guidelines as necessary.
   
   
4. Use your brand character across all your marketing materials and channels moving forward. It’s also a good idea to monitor the reaction to your character from your customers to potentially incorporate any feedback into future iterations.

Many organisations benefit from a strong brand character that portrays their values and builds a connection with their audience. They also find that it gives them a competitive advantage.

After all, there are often multiple companies within an industry that do the same thing, but a brand character is truly unique to just one. Don’t hesitate to contact us to find out how we can help create your brand character and strengthen your brand identity.

However, we understand that creating and utilising video can be daunting if you’re new to it. In this guide, we’re going to discuss how you can make the most video as part of your marketing mix. We’ll not only look at the types of videos you can make, and give you some tips for idea generation. We’ll also cover how to optimise videos to give them the best chance to appear in the SERPs and on YouTube.

As Tailor Brands puts it, “If you’re not already making quality video content for your audience, you are falling behind. The good news is that it has never been easier to make video content. The barrier to entry has dropped dramatically and audiences have an appetite for the content of any production value.”... So let’s get started!

Video Creation for Search Marketing

The first step is to define and plan what it is you want to create. Are you going to be filming product demos? Brand explainers? How-tos? Not only will this make a difference to the equipment you’re likely to need, but it may also impact the format of your videos. For example, ads or product clips shot for platforms such as Instagram or TikTok will be different to how-tos intended for hosting on YouTube. Although you don’t need to limit yourself to one type, you do need to have at least a rough plan to set out with.

Types of video content

We’ve touched on the fact that different platforms require different content but let’s go into more depth about some of the common types of video used in marketing and branding.

• Explainers: A brand or product explainer conveys the main USPs and elements of a brand, service or product in a digestible way. These can be filmed, animated, or a combination of the two. Typically, they’re 30-90 seconds long and used on homepages, emails, product/service pages and other landing pages. These are a great way to introduce your brand to new customers and communicate your values.

  Below is an example of an explainer video from More4apps

  
  
  

• How-tos: How-tos are very popular videos for solving a specific problem or answering a question a user has. These can be almost any length, and what’s more, search engines really value these as snippets to display in the SERPs. These can be particularly useful if you sell any products that can require guidance to use such as electronics, tools, or appliances.

  
  
  

• Thought Leadership: These videos help demonstrate your expertise and value to your customers. These can be on a range of topics and can be very successful at bringing a human face to your brand. For example, if you sell fitness equipment such as free weights, you could create videos demonstrating a range of exercises using them. Likewise, if your organisation provides services for something like accounting, you can create videos explaining the latest in tax law.

  
  
  
• Informational & Entertainment: Similar to thought leadership, videos like this exist to educate and entertain your audience to build brand awareness and loyalty. The subject matter can vary wildly, and this gives you your best opportunity to be creative.
  
  
• Q&As: Another great way to put a human face to your brand, Q&As offer your customers the chance to interact with you directly. You can go live on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok and engage in conversation with your viewers. These are especially useful around new product or service launches, special events or as a regular chance to check in with your audience.

Video Idea Generation

There are several ways to generate ideas for your video content. Using a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner, Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, Moz’s Keyword Explorer, or Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer is a great way to find out what people are searching for. Filtering by question keywords, in particular, will help when it comes to How-tos.

Free alternatives to the tools above include WordStream, Keyword Surfer, or Wordtracker.

To identify other informational keywords, tools such as Ubersuggest, Answer the Public, or Google Trends can be used. Alternatively, you can conduct manual research using the Featured Snippets or People Also Ask SERP elements, and then create videos that address those. For example:

How to optimise your videos for search

Once you’ve created your videos, there are several things you can do to help them appear on YouTube and Google SERPs. These include:

• Adding your keywords to the video title, description and file name
• Adding 5-7 relevant tags to the video
• Creating transcriptions and subtitles
• Implementing chapters with optimised titles
• Creating custom thumbnails
• Responding to comments
• Promoting your videos on other channels, such as social media
  
  
  • Cutting longer videos into 30s chunks and sharing them on Instagram Reels and TikTok can be a great way to generate traffic

How to create engaging videos

There are several ways to create videos depending on your budget and the amount of time available. For simple films, a phone, tripod, ring light and an external mic should be all you need. There are many free and low-cost editing suites such as Canva, iMovie, Adobe Premiere Elements, OpenShot and VSDC.

To make videos that are more professional looking, you’re likely to need a higher-end camera, microphone(s), studio lighting, a professional tripod and a powerful desktop or laptop to edit with. Higher-end, professional editing suites include Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere and CyberLink PowerDirector 365.

However, a 3rd option is to employ a video creation or branding agency. Employing experts will result in the best quality videos possible and will negate the need for you to buy your own equipment. The right creators will be able to advise you on not only the best types of video to create to achieve your goals but will be able to take on the whole process of planning, production and post-production. This will allow you to focus on other areas of your marketing and branding, safe in the knowledge that your video production is in safe hands.

Speak to us today to discuss your video creation needs; we’d be happy to help!

After all, a startling 8.10 million websites use WordPress – that’s 43% of all websites on the internet. And among websites using WordPress for their content management system (CMS), that’s a huge 65%.

In this guide, we’ll explain why WordPress website development is so popular compared to other website builders. Then, we’ll explain the two different ways you can use WordPress themes for business, the pros and cons, and why W/Brand have taken to creating custom WordPress themes for businesses.

Why WordPress?

As we’ve seen, the figures speak for themselves – WordPress is popular for many reasons. But why?

WordPress

WordPress began as a blogging platform in 2003. Since then, it’s evolved into an open source CMS, known as WordPress.org (not to be confused with WordPress.com, the blog hosting service). WordPress.org uses ‘themes’ as the central building blocks of the websites you can create. These themes are a collection of files that govern how your website will function and how it will look. The files include:

• Style sheets
• Code
• Templates
• Core branding
• Styling rules.

Thanks in part to being free if you choose and a long-standing reputation for being user-friendly, WordPress is firmly established as a CMS. But there are rivals. Let’s see a couple and how they compare.

Wix

Wix was founded in 2006. This website builder platform has a range of pricing options, from a free plan with basic features and advertising, to paid plans with more features and ads removed.

Wix offers themes and templates that can be customised by using its drag-and-drop editor. This platform has built up a reputation through the years and is considered by many to be simpler to use than WordPress. If you want to build a website that looks professional without having lots of tech knowledge and design skills, Wix is a good idea.

However, WordPress is better suited if you’re looking for a CMS that gives you greater control over design and functionality. And that’s why developers and creative teams use WordPress to build custom solutions for their clients.

Joomla

Joomla began in 2005 and is a popular choice for developers. The system is generally more advanced than WordPress, so beginners should be wary. Joomla offers great security and flexibility, and you can use different templates for different content.

But WordPress is more user-friendly than Joomla, and is backed up by free and professional support. It also has greater extensibility, meaning the huge amount of plugins and themes make it really easy to extend the structure and functionality of a website.

Now we know why WordPress and business go together so well. But whether you’ve decided to build with WordPress yourself, or want an agency to do the hard work for you, this is just the start. You also need to decide what type of themes to use – off-the-shelf, or a custom branded theme.

What are off the shelf WordPress themes?

Off-the-shelf WordPress themes, also known as pre-built, adopt the plug-and-play approach. You can choose from thousands of designs, and the one you pick will define how your site will look and what type of images to use, etc. Then it’s a case of plugging in text and images on different page types, which are included in each theme.

Pros

• Cost - many off-the-shelf WordPress themes are free, unless you choose a premium. Even then, the cost is often below £100.
• Simple - pre-built themes don’t require knowledge of HTML, PHP or other potentially scary looking acronyms. If you have small business, this can be appealing because you might not have resources to advertise for a developer.
• Aesthetics - just because they’re cheaper and simpler, off-the-shelf themes can still look very professional.

Cons

• Performance - some of the most attractive and popular pre-built themes have to pack more in, to cover the different types of businesses they can cater for. This potentially results in bloated software with too many plugins, which can make your site slow.
• Vulnerability - plugins may be vulnerable to security holes because theme developers don’t always update their creations. The majority of business WordPress sites vulnerable to attack are made from off-the-shelf themes.

What are custom branded WordPress themes?

Creating custom WordPress themes is a popular choice if you want a branded WordPress theme for your business. These themes can be built specifically for you, with your branding requirements and functionality built in. You receive a bespoke website for your target audience, whether you’re B2B or B2C.

Pros

• Speed and security - WordPress developers can optimise your website and tailor it to your needs. You can avoid bloat and unnecessary plugins that can slow your site down or leave it vulnerable to attacks.
• Branding - creating a custom WordPress theme makes it unique to your company. Your online presence will reflect your brand and your USPs without any concessions.
• Flexibility - working with a developer or agency means you can get ongoing maintenance to minimise bugs and downtime from other issues. And your site will be able to continually evolve as your business does.

Cons

• Requires expertise - although WordPress is user-friendly, custom themes can be tricky to build. Specialised input from an expert in WordPress is advised.
• Cost - creating custom WordPress themes is more expensive than grabbing an off-the-shelf set of templates.
• Time - due to the added complexity, and the number of choices that need to be made during building, a custom branded theme will take longer than a pre-built version, even when using a WordPress builder such as Elementor to make the job easier.

Our work with custom branded WordPress themes

B2B branding agency W/Brand built a website for global software company More4Apps. Using a custom business WordPress theme, we were able to avoid bloat and the need to shoehorn a pre-built theme into More4Apps’ branding. As great as Elementor’s WordPress B2B themes are, we didn’t like the idea of squeezing them into a website for More4Apps. So we made our own.

Our branded WordPress theme, Base, allows us to lawyer blocks on top of each other, rather than dragging and dropping. This old-school approach means coding is clean and streamlined, resulting in super-quick loading times to keep you ahead of the competition. And we can plug in components from CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce, too.

And just because the site is live, our work on it doesn’t stop. We’re constantly updating it.

Whether you’re looking for conversions with landing pages vs homepages for your B2B site, unique to your business branding, W/Brand recommends creating custom WordPress themes.

In this post, we will cover some of the fundamentals of rebranding, run through a few examples of a successful rebranding campaign, and explore the process behind it. So let’s get started!

What is the purpose of rebranding?

Tech Target defines rebranding as:

“The creation of a new look and feel for an established product or company. The usual goal of rebranding is to influence a customer's perception of a product, service or company by revitalising the brand to make it seem more modern and relevant to the customer's needs.”

The reasons for rebranding and creating a new image are multiple. These can include:

• Reflecting a change in business focus or vision, as well as part of a significant merger or expansion into new markets
• Differentiating from competitors
• Appealing to a new audience
• Exploiting the popularity of a new trend
• Reputation management and distancing the organisation from previous bad PR

Rebranding often includes updates to the logo, brand colours and guidelines, vision statements, tone of voice, imagery, video and other marketing materials, a new website, and sometimes even a new name.

What to consider before a rebranding campaign

Although it can come with a raft of benefits and set you up for future success, rebranding is not something that should be taken on lightly. Firstly, you need to consider why you want to rebrand and what you hope to achieve. Think about your business objectives for the next 3, 5 and 10 years. Is your current brand preventing you from achieving those? Will a rebrand help you achieve your goals faster? If the answer to either of these is yes, then it is worth considering whether you want to take on a brand refresh or a complete rebrand. 

What is a brand refresh?

A brand refresh or partial rebrand is ideal for established organisations that need to retain loyalty and recognition from customers while at the same time updating their identity to keep up with modern trends and tastes. A brand refresh can include making subtle changes to elements of the brand, such as the colours, logo or sonic identity.

A brand refresh can also be a good opportunity to test rebranding ideas before committing to the full process. Examples of a brand refresh include:

Burger King

Instagram

Ebay

Pepsi

However, if you feel that a brand refresh doesn’t go far enough to achieve your objectives, you’ll need to create a rebranding strategy.

How do you put together a rebranding strategy?

Correctly planning and executing your rebranding strategy will be key to your overall success. Although every organisation is different, there are several aspects of rebranding that are the same for everyone, and these need to be effectively planned and managed. Whether you’re conducting this yourself or employing a brand design agency, we’ve put together a process and rebranding checklist to guide you.

• The first step is to undertake a brand discovery and audit period to ensure you align your business objectives with your overall strategy. Conduct interviews, surveys and workshops with your customers, staff and people within the wider industry to highlight where your current branding does and doesn’t work to achieve your goals. This will form the basis of your strategy and how you will measure success.
  
  
• The next step is to create your brand strategy. Here, you’ll create a formal document that all stakeholders contribute to and agree on. This ensures that everything is covered, everyone knows their responsibilities, and you have a single source of truth to refer to.
  
  In this document, you’ll define what you’re trying to achieve, and how you’ll go about doing it. It will define your new brand identity including:
  
  
  • Brand DNA, architecture & positioning
  • Brand personality
  • Audience definition
  • USPs
  • Communication strategy
  • Brand name
  • Tagline & vision statement
    
    
• Following this, you’ll start to work on the rebrand itself by creating and developing the brand identity. Incorporating what you’ve learned in the discovery phase, define and agree on brand characteristics such as:
  
  
  • The logo and signage
  • Brand colours
  • Fonts and typography
  • Visual or sonic branding
  • Messaging

  It’s likely you may go through several iterations of these, but once they’re agreed, you move onto the brand development phase. Here, you’ll define and create all aspects of online and offline brand communication and customer touchpoints. For example, depending on your organisation, you might create:

  • Brand imagery
  • Newsletters and emails
  • Social media posts
  • Campaign videos
  • Product packaging
  • Printed marketing materials
• This process will result in the creation of formal brand guidelines. These are a complete description of your brand identity with instructions and guidance on how to implement it. These will be used as part of the creation of any content or messaging, whether it’s done by internal or external teams, to ensure that brand consistency is achieved.
• Once this has been agreed, you’re ready for launch. You’ll need to work with all internal and external teams to create a launch plan, as well as the supporting assets that will be used. If you’re planning on working with partners, influencers, brand ambassadors or PR experts, it’s at this point that you involve and brief them.
  
  Post-launch, it’s a good idea to undertake a full review of the process and the results. What has worked and what hasn’t? Have you achieved your objectives? If not, why not? Conducting the same interviews, workshops and surveys with the people at the start of this process will help you to understand whether the rebrand has been a success.

At Withbrand, we offer a range of rebranding services and have expertise working on projects of all sizes. Find out how we can help you by contacting us today.

Here are Withbrand, we define brand identity as:

A brand identity is the platform or foundation that everything is built on. 

When it comes to the global mega brands such as Apple, Pepsi or Disney, we can all instantly picture them in our heads. 

What’s more, we know exactly what they stand for and represent.

However, you don’t need to be one of these behemoths to benefit from a strong brand identity. In fact, it’s perhaps even more important to smaller organisations. 

In this article, we will explore what makes a strong brand identity and how you can utilise this yourself.

What makes a good brand identity?

People are connected to each other and brands more than ever before, but it’s a crowded market. Individuals are increasingly fragmenting in terms of the platforms they use and the information they consume. This means that brands need to have a strong, exciting and unique brand identity to stand out.

A strong brand identity is crucial to generating brand recognition and trust, customer loyalty, and, ultimately, long-term growth. Your identity ensures that you effectively and consistently communicate your brand values and mission across any channel.

Brand Identity vs Brand Image

It’s important to understand that brand identity and brand image are not the same. Although closely related, it’s easier to remember that brand identity is all the visual and aural elements that make up a brand. This includes things such as:

• The name
• The design including colours, shapes, graphics and other visual elements
• Any audio
• The language and messaging used across all channels and touchpoints
• How staff, employees and representatives interact with customers
• How physical locations such as stores look and where they’re situated
• Staff uniforms

The brand image is the result of all these things in the eye of the consumer. It's worth noting that this can be successful and unsuccessful. Think of how many brands have tried to cultivate a certain image and through creating the wrong brand identity, have completely missed the mark.

The best brands have merged all these elements to create something strong and memorable for the consumer. Jared Rosen, Senior Brand Manager at Wayfair sums it up perfectly:

"Brand identity is more than just finding the right logo to place on coffee cup sleeves or mount above your front door. It's about crafting a personality that amplifies the core elements of your brand's DNA. 

“Today, the most magnetic brand identities scale across digital platforms, IRL experiences, and even naturally converse with real customers."

Brand Identity Examples

To put this into context, think of some of the strongest brands in the world. When you think of Apple, you immediately see the logo, fonts and imagery in your mind. Then, you’re taken to a picture of a silver MacBook or an iPhone. You know that their products are aimed at fashionable, young professionals. You might even picture the Apple logo lit up on the back of a laptop. 

Similarly, if you think of Audi, what do you see? Your brain immediately thinks of a great, sleek design in a premium car, probably in black or silver. They’re high-tech and aspirational, without being intimidating. Even their tagline “Vorsprung Durch Technik” translates to “Progress Through Technology”.

So how do you go about creating your own brand identity?

Tips for creating a strong brand identity

To create a strong brand identity, you have to start with a thorough understanding of the following things. After all, if you don’t know these, how can you expect a consumer to?

• What's your vision and your mission? You need to define what you are as an organisation and what you stand for. What beliefs permeate your company? What do your products say about you? In short, why do you do what you do?
• How are you different? It’s a very competitive space, and you need to understand how you’re different from your competitors. Why should a customer choose you? What sets you apart?
• What’s your brand personality? If your brand was a person, what would their personality be? How would they communicate?
• Who is your audience? Once you understand yourself, you also need to research, understand and define your audience. You can’t (and shouldn’t!) be all things to all people! Work out who you’re targeting, and focus on them.
  • A popular approach among branding agencies is to define three words that you would want your audience to use to describe you and stick to them.
• What are your business goals? Different to your vision and mission, what do you want to achieve as a business? Understanding this will help you create your brand identity.

How to create a brand identity

Once you’re armed with this information, you can start working on creating the brand identity. Depending on your expertise and the size of your team, it may be worth consulting with a branding agency at this point - you don’t want to make any costly mistakes!

You’ll need to work with designers, communication experts, copywriters, developers, social media experts and marketing professionals to create your assets and agree on your brand guidelines and ToV. 

This includes logos, fonts, colours, imagery and videography, messaging and more. Once you’ve agreed on your brand identity internally, it’s time to create stories, content and other marketing activations to reach your target audience and start building that connection.

A strong brand identity is vital to the long-term success of any organisation. It allows you to create deep and meaningful connections with your audience and cements you in their mind. It’s not a quick process, and some of the strongest brands have taken years or even decades to build their identities, but all the effort will pay dividends.

In this guide, we’re going to introduce the concept and benefits of sonic branding, demonstrate how it can be used, and introduce you to some real-world examples. 

What is Sonic Branding?

We all know what visual branding is. It’s the reason we can recognise the McDonald’s arches or the Starbucks lady without any text. 

Well, sonic branding is exactly the same principle but in audio form. 

It’s a sound that is distinctly of a certain brand or organisation. It could be a tune, slogan, phrase, or even a simple audio effect. What’s more, it really works. Let’s look at some examples:

EA Sports: It’s In The Game: youtube.com/embed/XSliaQ3a_5Y

Apple Mac startup sound: youtube.com/embed/PLEupC2OWUU

NOKIA Ringtone: youtube.com/embed/Vk4KK-gh0FM

Intel: youtube.com/embed/-ihRPi4wcBY

Nobody questions the importance of visual branding for organisations, but many ignore or neglect the importance of audio as part of this mix. As one of the major senses and something that has the ability to stick in the brain, it’s a big oversight. After all, who hasn’t got a jingle or song stuck in their head?

In 2021, Spotify released its Culture Next report. In it, they said, “60% of millennials in the UK feel that audio is the most immersive form of media”, with figures similar for Gen Z audiences. 

With the continued rise of video platforms like TikTok and the longstanding dominance of audio platforms like Spotify, the ability for brands to utilise audio in their marketing is vast. 

However, sonic branding is much more than just a jingle. Daniel Jackson, author of Sonic Branding: An Introduction, explains, “Most brands still think sonic branding is a jingle or sonic logo rather than a whole suite of harmonious sounds that bind a brand identity.” 

In a world that’s increasingly becoming audio-first, sonic branding can be the link between ads, social media, podcasts, and other touchpoints such as call centres and retail locations.

What are the Benefits of Sonic Branding?

There are many benefits to effectively utilising sonic branding, but one of the primary ones is that sonic branding can become incredibly memorable. It becomes part of a customer’s life, and from then on, whenever they hear those sounds, they’ll associate them with your brand and a specific time in their life. 

Sound can be just as important as sight and smell in evoking an emotional response in a person. And while utilising smell may be some way off for branding teams, sound is one of the most untapped aspects that you can use to make your brand stand out. 

Many human decisions are made using the limbic part of the brain. This is responsible for our emotional and non-rational thoughts, behaviours, and memories. What’s important for marketers is that this part of the brain is also stimulated by sound.

So why is sonic branding important? Research by Dazed Studios suggests that 33% of adults under the age of 35 prefer brands with a sonic identity, and that these experiences may be vital to creating a lasting connection with your customers.

Sound can trigger emotions and complement visual branding. In some cases, even more so than visuals, but certainly together they are more than the sum of their parts. Think of the last time you watched a horror or action film, and now try and imagine it without sound, the effect on you the viewer would be a lot different. 

When your visual and aural branding is synchronised to deliver the same messaging and use the same creatives, you’ll provide a much more integrated customer experience.

Enhances brand recall. According to Marketing Tutor, “studies indicate that listening to sounds or music helps in correlating with the message and [improves] verbal memory of the audience… which leads to an improved brand recall.”

A 2020 study carried out by Spotify found that “listeners were more likely to enjoy audio ads than display ads across radio and streaming services. What’s more, audio ads are memorable and motivational, driving 24% higher recall rates than their display [counterparts], and are twice as likely to lift purchase intent”

Clear Messaging: Music has a direct relationship with emotions. Every sound or chord triggers different types of emotions. Using the right sound for your brand will be very helpful in communicating your message with the target audience in a better, more creative and more effective way.

How can you use Sonic Branding in 2023?

Just as you pay huge attention to your visual branding, in 2023 you should seek to combine it with sound to create a full brand experience across devices. Take what you know about your target audience, and create a strategy to reach them through sound. 

Then, identify your customer touchpoints to create sounds that can impact their experience, feelings and mood. For example, the background music in a product video or the sound of a button press in your mobile app.

Consider how your sonic and visual branding work together to create your overall look and feel. Branding should be simple, memorable and unique. It should also be specific and tailored to the platform(s) you intend to utilise most. For example, sonic branding can be used in places such as:

• Podcasts
• Videos
• Vlogs
• Ads
• Social media
• Radio and broadcast media
• Websites and apps
• In-store audio
• Customer service hold music

Sonic branding represents a great opportunity for forward-thinking and innovative brands to create a long-term connection with their audience. Research shows that the younger generations place significant value on audio in their lives. Interacting and forging memories as they’re young, by reaching them at the right time and on the right platform, should pay dividends in the future.

If you want to create a meaningful brand that will resonate far and wide, you must identify the needs of your audience and market. For example, what popular search terms surround your business, and how can you utilise them to attract new clients? What expectations does your audience have, and how can you use both marketing and sales to meet - and hopefully exceed - them? 

We’ve developed six golden rules for building a brand that will help achieve your company goals and carve a meaningful space for your brand identity.

Core values

It may seem obvious, but establishing your company’s core values - what the backbone of your business will be - is essential for building a brand. It’s important not to think of your core values as a box-ticking exercise but rather a conversation about what is important to you and your business and what - besides profit - will influence your decision-making.

Core - or brand - values are the scaffolding which holds everything together. They will impact your marketing campaigns, helping to establish things like tone of voice and demographics, as well as your customer support. If you are able to compound your core values into one simple yet effective mission statement, your customers will have something to latch onto, helping to build reputation and trust.

A clear marketing strategy

There’s no way around it: marketing is a major part of any company. It can seem daunting at first not knowing where to start. The internet and social media can at times feel like a black hole, where cutting across the noise and making a real impact seems impossible. This is where your core values and brand immersion come into play, helping to establish your voice against the competition.

At WithBrand, our expertise ranges from content marketing to social media and email marketing campaigns, with a focus on brand cohesion. By building a marketing strategy with your brand at the heart of everything, you’ll be able to market your product in a way that’s both organic and futureproof.

It’s important to remember that the way consumers buy their products has changed over the years, which means the way you sell has to as well!

More than just a logo

The power of logos shouldn’t be underestimated: after all, they’re usually the first thing a customer sees when engaging with your business. However, while a company logo is undoubtedly key for your brand identity, it shouldn’t be the thing that defines it. It’s best to think of your logo as an extension of your brand identity rather than the foundation.

At WithBrand, we take several things into account to successfully build a brand identity, including tone of voice, visual guidelines and core values. By building from the inside out in this way, your brand is driven by its belief system: this is what your customers will be interacting with, after all, not just your visual identity.

Which brings us onto our next point…

Customer service is key

It may sound obvious, but having great customer support is crucial for your business. Not only is it a vital part of your service, but establishing a strong customer support ethos will help to build your brand’s reputation and loyalty. We’ve lost track of how many companies develop a bad reputation for providing poor customer support - but equally, we’ve seen a company’s brand identity grow organically through word of mouth by customers who received a high level of customer support.

Using social media tools to keep track of indirect complaints on Facebook and Twitter can be a great way to keep your finger on the pulse, identifying what is or isn’t working and allow you to pre-emptively tackle any queries or complaints your customers may have.

Know your customers

One way to ensure a happy customer is to be confident in who they are. Are you certain about the core demographic you’re selling to? Do you know their habits and tendencies? Having buyer personas is the first big step towards this.

Establishing your buyer personas should be high up on your branding checklist. Working out who your ideal customer is, what their spending habits are, and how they like to buy their products can be pivotal in how you tailor your marketing campaigns. If you can ascertain where to find your customers, and what sort of content they’re looking for - for example, if they prefer digital marketing as opposed to printed materials - then you’ll be able to streamline your processes, as well as find new opportunities to reach your target demographic.

Branding personas can be as simple or as detailed as you want, but it’s important to establish a clear image of who you’re selling to. Hopefully, once you identify your ideal customers, you’ll be able to finetune your content towards them, and create your very own brand evangelists.

Brand evangelists

What are brand evangelists, you ask? Put simply, these are customers who love your product so fiercely, they vocally champion you. They are the people who defend your company on social media and forums, who regularly engage with your content and promote you. In fact, they’ve become so important for companies that ‘evangelism marketing’ is now considered a crucial form of marketing.

In an age where content can seem inauthentic, brand evangelists provide an invaluable personal element, ideally creating a community of people who also love your brand and product. In many ways, evangelists are even more lucrative than something like celebrity endorsements, as the ‘realness’ of their praise is reassuring to other potential customers.

If you’ve managed to hone your core values, marketing strategy and customer support to sell your product in the best possible way, there’s no reason why brand evangelists shouldn’t flock to you!

The very nature of exhibiting can be daunting, as it can be tricky knowing where to begin. From the initial planning and preparation stage to the best ways to effectively brand your products and services, we’ve compiled a guide to help you where it matters. Check out these branding tips for successful exhibition design.

Set your intentions

Firstly, it’s essential to work out what you’re trying to showcase to potential customers at a trade show. To do this, it’s a good idea to think about your business's values or aims. Ask yourself the following:

• Are you seeking to gain more leads?
• Do you hope to find other companies or businesses to make connections or partner up with?
• Is your purpose to sell your product or service to existing customers or to sell to new ones?

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, you can use the outcomes to determine the goal for your brand exhibition and how best to promote your branding accordingly. This will form the ideas needed to design your promotional materials for the exhibition.

Plan for your brand exhibition

One of the first things you will want to do is book your space at the exhibition, and there are a few things you’ll need to bear in mind. Initially, you will want to consider the position of your stand and how many potential customers and businesses will be able to see this at the brand exhibition.

Once you have this finalised, you can then consider the logistics, such as how many roller banners, flyers, business cards and larger graphics you anticipate for the exhibition. A crucial part of your planning should be to research various printing companies so that you can get a range of quotes together for the branding promotion materials.

Another important aspect of your exhibition design will be to consider the number of staff members you’ll need, not only to man your own brand’s stand but also to be a spokesperson for your business.

Promote, promote, promote

Pre-trade show events, as you are going to promote your business, it’s key to advertise that you will be attending and to give yourself enough time to send out reminders and ‘save the dates’. Look for a timeline of 3-6 months in advance to send these out. This is important so that customers can find a way to interact with you.

For the event, whichever space you end up going with, you’ll want to ensure your brand stands out at the trade show. One of the most simple ways you can do this is to draw people in. Encourage potential new customers to come over to your stand and start a conversation. This is also helpful for brand activation. Here are some ways in which you can encourage customers to visit your particular stand:

• Competitions
• Demonstrations
• Activities.

Product demonstrations, talks, and competitions are among the most popular ways to attract visitors. These types of engagement activities can encourage other trade show visitors to stop and see why so many people might have gathered around your stand.

It’s crucial to include a clear call to action on any of your promotional branding materials. This shouldn't just include take away flyers, leaflets or business cards, but should also be reflected in your roller banners and larger graphics. 

Remember, plenty of existing and potential customers will be taking photographs to share with other potential customers. So make it clear exactly what your goal of the day is going to be and relate the call to action on your visuals.

Impact and memorability is key

If engaging activities, such as competitions or brand giveaways are going to be a focal part of your brand exhibition, then it’s imperative to make these memorable.

Consider your brand’s audience and make sure this appeals to the target customer. As well as making sure your stand is attractive and well-designed to catch the eye of your potential customers, you’ll likely want to think of an exhibition competition or giveaway that entices visitors to your stand as well as ideas to engage with them for longer periods of time so that they turn into potential leads.

If you are thinking of offering giveaways or competitions as part of your exhibition, think about your audience and make it appealing to them. You could try some classic ideas for brand engagement, such as the below:

• How many sweets are in the jar?

  This particular exhibition competition is super simple to set up and creates a friendly competitive atmosphere among attendees. All you need to do is fill a jar with a variety of sweets and ask visitors to guess how many sweets are in the jar. To capture the answer, make a sheet where you ask any visitors to provide their name, email address and their guess for a chance to win. You’ve then gained a list of email addresses for email marketing purposes.

• Hold a raffle

  Much like a classic raffle contest, but rather than selling raffle tickets, you hand them out to prospective customers and then ask them to revisit your stand at a specific time to draw the raffle.

• Branding merchandise

  The ideal items for ultimate brand promotion. Think tote bags, pens, pin badges, stickers. Essentially, any item that won’t cost your business a fortune to invest in, but can increase attraction to your stand and encourage people to talk about your brand, is a winning strategy.

A large number of people at brand exhibitions will appreciate an interactive competition and giveaway, and it will help to footfall and a buzz around your brand.

Here at Withbrand, we understand the importance of exceptional exhibition design and have worked with a host of innovative companies to increase engagement and participation.

One such example is the work we did with global power management company and technology leader, Eaton, to help develop their marketing solutions. From advertising campaigns to ebooks, infographics, brochures, and more importantly, their trade show exhibition designs, we adopted and utilised highly creative strategies to ensure a connective experience with the end consumer.

With it, it brings a whole new way of collecting, presenting, and analysing your data. In this post, we’ll run over the basics of GA4 and what it means for you.

What is GA4?

Simply put, GA4 is the latest iteration of Google Analytics and launched in October 2020. Since then, it has been the default analytics property, replacing Universal Analytics.

The main difference between the two is that GA4 focuses on both websites and apps, with an emphasis on the user journey. Due to the different ways people behave on websites and apps, it required a new measurement model based on events and parameters rather than sessions.

It’s also an attempt to better focus on user privacy in response to legislation such as GDPR and CCPA.

As Russell Ketchum, Director of Product Management at Google Analytics, says:

“Universal Analytics was built for a generation of online measurement that was anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions, and more easily observable data from cookies. This measurement methodology is quickly becoming obsolete. Meanwhile, Google Analytics 4 operates across platforms, does not rely exclusively on cookies, and uses an event-based data model to deliver user-centric measurement.”

GA4 currently runs alongside Universal Analytics. However, on July 1st, 2023, UA will stop collecting data altogether. However, you will still have access to your historical data until the end of 2023.

The July 2023 cut-off point also means that unless you set up your GA4 property before June 2022, you will be unable to make YoY data and performance comparisons until you have a full 12 months of data within GA4. The best time to set up GA4 was October 2020, but the second best time is today!

What to expect from GA4, and how is it different from UA?

Google explains that GA4 is built for the future of measurement and:

• Collects both website and app data to better understand the customer journey
• Uses event-based data instead of session-based
• Includes privacy controls such as cookieless measurement, and behavioural and conversion modelling
• Predictive capabilities offer guidance without complex models
• Direct integrations to media platforms help drive actions on your website or app

This means that those who use GA on a regular basis will have to learn their way around a completely new platform, and change their approach to analysing these new metrics. However, by offering

Where UA had several different data points nested within each other, such as by User, Session, Hit (such as Pageview or Event), or Product (for e-commerce tracking), GA4 simplifies this by offering a much simpler structure.

All data sent through GA4 exists as events, and this is supplemented with a User ID. This makes data collection simpler, but also opens up a ton of opportunities for creating custom reports and dashboards to report on almost anything you need. However, where GA4 really shines is its integration of machine learning.

GA4 works with pre-built reports, which when backed up with machine learning can then be customised to produce a huge variety of dashboards on the fly. This vast new capability in data collection and exploration should make analysis and the gathering of insights much more useful to the end user. Users can also expect a more comprehensive integration with Data Studio for creating and sharing reports with clients and other stakeholders.

Heavy users of Universal Analytics will be delighted to hear that data sampling should be a thing of the past with GA4. Because GA4 is more responsive and scalable, building reports as it goes, the threshold for sampling will almost never be reached, and even large organisations will encounter it much less frequently. Gary Stubbenhagen at Builtvisible explains:

“Universal Analytics would start to sample if the property contained more than 500,000 sessions for the data range reported on. It doesn’t matter whether the data would be included in the report, or if the data was filtered out of the view. If [it was] collected, it counted. In GA4, sampling kicks in [above] more than 10 million events.”

How can brands adapt to GA4?

Brands, agencies and digital teams will have to adapt quickly to understand the new model and get the most out of it for clients and stakeholders. GA4 ensures a more complete view of the customer journey rather than separating data into independent sessions or platforms. Therefore, combining metrics such as e-commerce data from the web and apps into a single report will take some getting used to, but will provide a more accurate picture of overall digital performance.

Likewise, the new platform will enable marketing professionals to make truly data-driven decisions. For example, the attribution algorithm distributes conversion credits across different touchpoints, allowing you to see which marketing activity is driving conversions.

However, some of the metrics we have all gotten used to in UA, such as average session duration, do not have direct equivalents in GA4, while others such as bounce rate are calculated very differently. That said, in most instances, it should be possible to configure a report that tells you the same information, albeit with potentially different names. This will make YoY comparisons between old and new data impossible though.

On that point, there is no simple way to migrate data from UA to GA4, and as we’ve already discussed, you will eventually lose access to your historical data. Even if you export it all, due to the differences in the platform, there will be no way to import it back into GA4. Therefore, it’s really important you start collecting GA4 data as soon as you can to ensure the period where you are unable to compare YoY data is as short as possible.

One of the best ways for brands to adapt to GA4 is to simply get their hands dirty and start using it. Google provides a treasure trove of resources to help you familiarise yourself with the change. Also, sites like Moz and Search Engine Journal offer user guides to help you set up your GA4 property and start analysing data.

Google Analytics 4 represents the biggest change in data gathering and analysis in a decade. However, such a shakeup offers both challenges and opportunities to those that are ready to seize them. Utilising the new data and insights, especially around user journeys and behaviour, will give organisations a much greater understanding of what their customers are doing, and the marketing tactics that are effective in driving conversions.

In this article, we’ll be looking at what brand activation means, why it’s essential and some examples. Let’s jump in.

What is meant by brand activation?

Put simply; brand activation is any interaction where a brand drives a customer to take action.

Think about your brand. If nobody knows who you are, they’re not aware of you. Even if you have the best branding and the best products, there’s no point in any of it if people don’t even know you exist. Your brand needs to be activated before it can start progressing.

Whether it’s through an event, a campaign, or an email - whatever it may be - brand activation opens the door for your customers to engage with you directly. In doing so, it makes you known to potential customers.

Why is brand activation important?

As with most areas of digital marketing, brand activation is crucial as it helps you to stand out in a saturated market.

For example, if your brand is new, you know your audience well, but they’re yet to know you. Brand activation is the important process of presenting your brand and creating a connection with your audience. One that hopefully makes them take action in the way you want them to.

Brand activation examples

It may help to see some examples in action.

The renowned tea brand, Yorkshire Tea, is well known for doing justice with its marketing. Although not a new brand, their marketing campaigns often involve tapping into current events or using relevant celebrities to engage their customers in a memorable way. Examples include:

• Serving Yorkshire Tea from a converted ice cream van
• Using born and bred Yorkshire man, Sean Bean, to star in one of their campaigns on getting things done ‘the proper way’
• Releasing a social distancing teapot during the height of COVID restrictions

Brand activation process

If you want to make a buzz around your brand and get people talking, activation is a good place to start. And for that, you need a strategy. Let’s take a look at some top-level thoughts on how to get that strategy in place:

1) Make sure you know who your brand is

Before jumping in, you need to make sure you’re clear on who your brand is and what it stands for. A good way of doing this is by taking part in brand immersion to really get to the nitty-gritty of your value and how you want to position yourself.

2) Make sure you know who your audience is

What is a brand without its audience? Before taking a random guess with no research or evidence to back it up, it’s important to understand who your audience is so you can meet their needs.

It’s a known fact in marketing that customers prefer to engage with marketing that is tailored to them. That’s why you need to take the time to research the demographics, interests, wants, likes, dislikes and traits of your ideal customer. Creating buyer personas can be a huge help in this area.

3) Consider how to best reach your audience

There are countless ways to interact with your audience, but not every approach will be right for your brand. From interactive games to product demonstrations, email marketing campaigns to social media influencers, pop-up shops to events, it’s important to choose a method that suits your objectives and budget.

4) Take a look at the wider market

Don’t let the excitement of speaking to your audience take over. Before jumping into campaigns, events and other forms of marketing, you need to look at the wider market and what is going to work best for you.

An effective process could be to complete a SWOT analysis to understand your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats before looking at the wider market and your competitors too. This will allow you to better grasp where you sit in the market and how you compare to the competition.

Link up your efforts

Once you’ve gathered the research and analysed the results, it’s time to bring it together into a coherent strategy. But remember, the marketing world has more channels than ever before so it’s important to consider your strategy holistically if you want it to have the most impact. Look at how you can link up the activation experiences across various touchpoints to gain a better result.

For example, if you are running a physical pop-up event in a city centre, it’s important to shout about it on your social media platforms. This not only ensures the campaign gets the exposure it needs to attract a crowd, but it also ensures your marketing efforts are consistent across the board. After all, there’s no point putting time, money, resources and effort into something if you don’t promote it well.

How to measure brand activation

Success should not be measured solely by the number of sales. While increased revenue is often the end goal for many marketers, creating an emotional connection, raising awareness and building a loyal audience who will return time and time again is extremely important.

Here are some areas you could look at to see how your activation strategy has performed:

• Engagement: Whether it’s followers, sales, mentions, comments, likes or interactions across email, your website and social media.
• Customer acquisition: Did your number of customers, sales and revenue increase?
• Metrics: How is your campaign performing on all fronts? Track performance and engagement as it happens at live events.

Activating your brand

The aim is to get your audience to feel something. Whether you make your audience laugh, feel excited, feel empathy or sadness, creating an emotional connection is the first part of getting your audience to remember you. Then you can go forward, continue engaging with them, encouraging them to take action and hit those all-important objectives on the head.

Today, buyers have a choice. Making your brand stand out in a saturated market is tricky business, but possible. Hone in on your values, what you stand for and what makes you unique to appeal to your audience’s niche requirements is the way to do it.

So, where does brand immersion come into all of this? Let us explain. 

The importance of branding 

We could write a book on the importance of branding but let’s keep it top-level for now.

Your brand is at the forefront of your business. It’s what potential customers see. First, it’s your first impression and what they remember. Maintaining impactful and consistent branding across all your channels is a must. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your online efforts, such as your website, email marketing and social media channels, or your offline material, such as brochures, business cards and event collateral, much like how a well-crafted fazit bachelorarbeit beispiel ensures a strong final impression. For those needing to present their work effectively, services that allow you to Referate kaufen offer polished, structured content, while students working on longer projects can benefit from professional support to have a Studienarbeit schreiben lassen. For comprehensive academic guidance, platforms like Akademily provide the same consistency and impact across every stage of your academic journey, ensuring your work leaves a lasting impression.

Thoughtful, strong branding can also build trust with your audience by demonstrating your values and what you stand for. If this hits home with a potential customer, they’re more likely to believe in what you do and return time and time again.

All of these points mean one thing. Branding has become a vital part of every business. As such, your marketing needs to do an excellent job of representing your brand, and your agency needs a crystal clear understanding of your world. 

This is where brand immersion comes in…

What is brand immersion, and why is brand immersion so important?

To create strong foundations to build on, brand immersion is an essential and exciting part of the discovery stage. 

It involves your agency fully immersing themselves in your world -  much more than simply understanding what you sell and who your customers are. 

It’s in-depth research of who you are, what you do, what you sell, who your customers are, and what your customers are saying. It’s listening (really listening) to your pain points and what you want to achieve. It’s rolling up our sleeves and taking a more hands-on approach to understand what’s behind your product or service. Brand immersion allows us to get to know your business like it's our own. 

When these experiences are implemented, the result is powerful branding that a customer cannot help but interact with. With a rock-solid understanding of our brand, you can expect more engagement from your audience and better results from your efforts.

How can your business use brand immersion?

A brand with personality is a brand customers want to be involved with. Brand immersion can encourage engagement, create emotion and build long-lasting connections. This is done through interactions that ignite inspiration with your audience, motivating them to take the next step. By really understanding what your business stands for and what makes your customers tick, you can give your branding a unique edge.

Now, all of this theory is important, but how does it translate in the real world? The aim is to spark connections through your customers’ senses, encouraging them to try your brand for themselves. Examples of this could include: 

• Using social media channels and influencers to create authentic brand messaging from the people your audience trust
• Creating a pop up bar in your local city centre to trial your new gin flavour 
• Opening a selfie-station at a relevant event with branded collateral 
• Offering impressive limited time promos through competition draws 
• Getting your branding out there where your audience are on a full vehicle wrap

Our top 5 brand immersion tips 

• Do it differently: Take inspiration from your competitors and the brands you love, but always do it your own way. After all, your brand is unique!
• Get to know your customers: The only way you’ll really appeal to your audience is by getting to know them better. 
• Dig, dig, dig: Let your agency get to know your story, your history, your expertise, your ambitions, your successes, your failures. The more we know, the more we can do.
• Put into action: Research is a must, but don’t let it stop there. Once brand immersion is underway, it’s time to put the results into action.
• The results: Always take time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. You’ll soon get a clearer picture of exactly what it is your customers want from you.

We want to learn about you

Brand immersion provides the opportunity for us to build strong relationships with you, our client. It’s an interesting and unique strategy that produces real-world results and keeps those creative juices flowing. 

By immersing ourselves in your brand, we’re better placed to understand how it feels to walk in your shoes and understand what your clients need. This insight allows us to tell the important stories in a way that resonates, making your efforts stronger, more impactful and more successful. 

Through brand immersion, your brand can be tailored to communicate with the right people in the right way to demonstrate the very best of who you are.

But what’s more important than just branding? Well, creating a cohesive brand, of course. Without a cohesive brand strategy, you’ll struggle to grow. The quicker you can get this strategy in place, the stronger your position in the market will be.

In this article, we talk about what brand coherence is, why it’s so important and how you can create brand cohesion.

What is brand coherence?

In a fast-paced world, it’s easy to lose sight of your brand foundations which can cause you to make inconsistent marketing decisions. But this can damage your brand and create confusion with potential customers. This is where brand cohesion can help.

Brand cohesion is the consistency of your messaging and your brand. It can unify every effort to create a strong brand when considered properly. However, this is more than simply how your business looks. It’s also how your brand shows up wherever it is being seen and how it makes people feel.

Whether it’s your website, blog posts, social media presence, infographics or email marketing, every single one of your marketing efforts should be aligned to your brand foundations. By presenting yourself in a consistent way, people can understand who you are wherever they see you which builds interest, trust and, in turn, conversions.

Why is brand cohesion important?

First impressions are vital in the corporate world. A customer's first impression of your brand can influence how they react and engage with your business going forward. This underlying uniformity is hugely valuable and can strengthen any business. Cohesive branding helps create a positive first impression and means customers can recognise your brand regardless of the channel they see it on.

Without even realising it, you will see examples of well-known companies using cohesive branding everyday. Take the fast food giant, McDonalds, for example. McDonalds has become such a cohesive brand that they’ve even removed all branding from their ads in the past. No images, no logos - just the brand’s colour palette and chosen type.

When done well, brand coherence is a powerful thing. So, does everybody need it?

Does everyone need brand coherence?

In short, yes. Every business will benefit from creating a cohesive branding strategy. Brand coherence will help you establish your brand and the many components that make your brand a business. For example your products, services, customers, place in the market and so on.

If your brand is spread across multiple products or services it could be hard to create a cohesive brand. But there are ways around this. For example, creating individual collections that carry a cohesive message. Or, creating a style guide to organise your branding assets. A style guide will also help everyone within your business understand and use your assets with consistency.

The benefits of brand cohesion

Recognition: Possibly, the top outcome of brand cohesion is creating a brand that people can recognise, no matter where they are when they engage with your brand.

Trust: Branding can increase trust by making you appear more professional and respectable, particularly when it is cohesive and consistent. Trust is important for any business and can help to increase sales while growing a loyal audience.

Efficiency: Cohesive branding can actually make your marketing efforts more efficient as a style guide can include things like templates and colour palettes to ensure all communications are visually aligned.

Conversions: With a unified message from channel to channel, nothing is lost in translation and so customers are more likely to engage and convert.

Time to create a cohesive brand

While brand cohesion isn’t something you can create overnight, it can be broken down into a step by step process. Take a look at all areas of your marketing, such as:

• Logos (brand identity design)
• Brand colours
• Imagery and brand applications
• Icons
• Graphic language
• Tone of voice
• Marketing channels

By looking at each area with a unified approach, it’s easier to see where your efforts need to be more aligned. Now that we’ve talked through brand coherence in more depth, it’s time to take a look at your brand and how cohesive your efforts are.

When working to improve brand awareness, our first thoughts are often of the outward-facing elements of a brand. The logo, the colour palette, the font and even the tone of voice we use to communicate our core messages. These elements are essential for brand awareness, but what about the internal components that help build and maintain a brand? Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of these crucial elements.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Search engines like Google or Yahoo enable customers to find the answers they are looking for, whether a helpful blog post addresses a problem they have or connects them with a service provider who can help them with a particular task. SEO enables search engines to rank websites accurately to provide search engine users with the content that best suits their needs. The ranking can be based on content, keywords and structure, as well as the speed of your website, responsiveness design and more.

A well-optimised website helps push your business or organisation to appear higher up in the search engine results that appear when a user enters a query or a search term. Therefore, it's essential to ensure your website is optimised with relevant and quality content that users are searching for; this is the foundation of building brand awareness through SEO.

Why SEO matters for Brand Awareness

SEO is essential for increasing brand awareness because it helps people discover you online.

When someone searches for a product or service you offer, they will likely come across your website in the search results. This will help you reach a much larger audience than if your website was not visible in the search results.

When it comes to search engine results, there can often be pages upon pages of results, all offering content that matches the search term a user has entered. In other words - it’s very competitive.

But, if you aren’t working on improving the SEO of your website, not only will you miss out on potential customers and valuable website traffic, it is likely that those users could end up on a competitor's website. Your brand will be lost in a sea of more prominent sites.

SEO also helps to establish credibility and trustworthiness among your audience. This is particularly important as brand awareness is essential for building trust with customers. When customers see you have a strong presence in the search engine rankings, they're more likely to believe that you are an authority on the subject. This can help to drive sales and help you reach business goals.

People will also start to associate certain terms and phrases with your company as your rankings improve. Every time you pop up in the SERPs you are increasing your reach and brand awareness online.

You can also work towards providing a content hub or blog full of useful content. These articles will help your brand to be found and portray you as an expert in your niche.

We’ve summarised some of the key ways SEO helps boost brand awareness below.

Ways in which SEO helps brand awareness

1. It gets your brand seen in the search results
2. It ensures your brand comes across the way you want it to
3. It presents the right content to your audience and helps create a content hub for your audience to engage with
4. Your audience start to relate certain words and phrases to your brand
5. It helps to target the right audience and reach them in the places where they are active
6. It helps you get recognised and build a reputation locally (local SEO)
7. It increases brand reach, which in turn improves brand awareness
8. SEO can often be described as PR in disguise because it gets your brand in front of online audiences

5 ways you can improve your search engine optimisation

Now that you know what SEO is and why it's important for brand awareness, it's time to discuss what methods you can employ to help ensure that your website is optimised in order to give you the best chance of improving your brand awareness.

1. Create Quality Content: Your business or organisation should use content marketing to ensure that users are provided with quality content that is relevant to their search query and provides a great user experience. Carefully consider your audience. Consider what needs they have or what information they might need and create content with this in mind, so your website shows up in the search results when your ideal customer enters a search term into Google.

2. Use Keywords Wisely: Optimising your content for the keywords your customers or website visitors are likely to be using is a great way to improve SEO. Utilise keywords & phrases that accurately describe the product/service you're offering while also being mindful of how they are used in your website's content. Tools such as SEMRUSH and Moz Keyword Explorer can help you to identify the most relevant and commonly used keywords so you can choose the correct keywords that people are actually using when they're searching for content online. However, it is important to remember that the quality of the copy is paramount. Keyword stuffing is never a good idea. The content should sound natural and be written for users, not search engines.

3. Optimise Website Speed: Making sure that your website loads quickly and efficiently will also play a role in increasing visibility in search engine rankings. The faster your website loads, the better the user experience. Find out ways to improve your website speed here.

4. Work on increasing 'Inbound Links': Inbound links or backlinks refer to links that lead to your website which are on other pages. Search engines view inbound links as a sign that your website is of value and, as a result, will rank it higher in the search results.

5. Technical SEO: Make sure your website is coded correctly, meets the recommended requirements for web speed & mobile responsiveness and that you check the quality of your backlinks regularly. You should also ensure that your page titles and meta descriptions are optimised. Creating good meta descriptions will help customers to get a quick idea of what your website or webpage is offering them. If done well, the meta description should encourage more clicks and increase the number of relevant visitors coming to your website.

By implementing these methods, you can ensure that your website is well-optimised for SEO, allowing you to reach a larger audience and improve brand awareness in the process. Remember, SEO takes time; you should consider it a long-distance marathon rather than a sprint. It's important to be patient to continually monitor the success of your efforts and continue to employ the methods listed above to improve your SEO. Good luck!

It's almost Christmas!

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we hope you can celebrate the holidays with loved ones this year.

Donations and charity efforts bring communities together; helping those in need or giving back to your community is a great way to spend the holidays.

The Salvation Army (USA) - https://loom.ly/ree_PH8
The Salvation Army (UK) - https://loom.ly/vkF9OHA
Shelter (UK) - https://loom.ly/hYfkWCg

2023 Brand Design Agency

We'll be opening our doors on January 5th, and we can't wait to get started on your next brand design project. We cover exhibition, graphic, and website design—so whatever you need to make your business look great, we can help you with it!

However, with email marketing, we often send numerous emails a day in large batches and they can be sent instantly. So naturally, errors can occur. We’re only human, after all.

You might be panicking and frantically Googling, ‘how do I correct an email mistake?’ Don’t fret. We’ve put together some helpful advice on how to correct an email after you’ve sent it and the steps to follow. Plus, some tips for sending error correction emails.

Here’s how to fix email errors and prevent yourself from making the same mistake again.

How can you go about fixing email errors?

Don't Panic:

It's important to remember that everybody makes mistakes, and accidents happen. So, if you find yourself on the wrong side of an email error, the first thing to remember is to stop, take a breath, and don't panic. By stopping and giving yourself the time to think, you'll be able to consider and calmly plan the next steps for correcting the email mistake in the best way. Acting right away while you are stressed can sometimes cause more harm than good. Take your time to think about how you want to respond and what you want to say.

Strategies:

You don't need to fix every email mistake, so when an error happens, considering if a correction email is the appropriate course of action is essential. For example, if it's something small like a spelling error or something that won't cause any confusion/problems, you most likely won't need to do anything. If it bothers you, though, you can always send a quick follow-up highlighting what you meant to say.

However, a correction email would be required if the issue is incorrect information or a broken link/wrong time for a meeting. If that’s the case, the following advice should be followed:

• Ensure correction emails are sent promptly (after taking enough time to think clearly about how to respond) for best effect, and remember to apologise for any inconvenience caused.
• Be clear and concise with your correction email: clarify the mistake, explaining what corrections have been made and why. If necessary, explain any actions that the recipient may require.

How to Prevent Email Mistakes

It's impossible to prevent email errors and mistakes 100% of the time, but you can take steps to minimise the frequency. One of the most important ones is to always proofread your email before sending it. This is essential. However, there are some difficulties worth noting.

We often see what we expect to see rather than what is actually there. As you are the one who wrote the email, you know what message you are trying to convey and what should be written. As such, you will not only understand the meaning being conveyed but also see the words as they are supposed to be written, missing specific spelling errors.

To prevent and/or reduce email error rate, follow these tips.

Read It Aloud

By reading your work aloud, you'll bypass the problems that come with proofreading in your head. Reading aloud slows you down, allowing more time for your brain to notice errors. You’ll see the words as they are written rather than as your brain predicts they should be written. Giving you time to see things that you would otherwise miss.

In addition, you'll be able to hear how your work sounds. Reading aloud enables you to notice the writing’s tone. Letting you hear how the content sounds and, therefore, gives you a better understanding of how it may land with the recipient.

Have Someone Else Read Over Your Work

Never underestimate how valuable a second pair of eyes can be. It's easy for mistakes to slip through the cracks when proofreading our own work. Asking someone else to read the email before you send it is a great way to reduce the likelihood of errors slipping through. They bring a fresh pair of eyes and, because they are not as close to the content, are much more likely to see things we missed and notice when sentence construction does not make sense, or we have repeated things we did not need to.

Take a Minute

If no one is available and the email needs to go, ‘Take A Minute’. Get the email ready to go but let it sit in the Drafts for at least a minute. Do something else, for example, make a tea or walk away from your desk for a short time. Let the email sit in Drafts and then, when back at your desk, read it one more time before sending. You will be surprised how many things you notice the second time around.

Remember A.I.L

A.I.L is an acronym for Address In Last. The purpose of the acronym is to remind you to put the recipient's email address in last. The reason? Because you can't send an email without an address. So, by remembering A.I.L, you will only be able to send the email when you are 100% sure that it is ready to be sent.

A.I.L isn't just for new emails; you can also use it when crafting reply emails. Delete the email address of the person you are replying to, and when you're sure there are no errors, and it's ready, add it back in. This process ensures the email only goes to who it is intended for and it has not been sent ‘Reply All’ by mistake, which, depending on the content, may or may not be appropriate.

As a follow-up to this tip, it’s vital to double-check check WHO you are sending the email to. So try and get into the habit of not only doing a proofread, but double checking carefully who you are sending the email to before you click send.

Spelling and grammar tools

Tools like Grammarly and Hemmingway can highlight spelling issues and typos that you wouldn’t otherwise have spotted. They are more advanced than standard spell checks, and they can be used for everything you write online, from emails to LinkedIn messages and blog articles. Having a tool like this hooked up to your email can help reduce errors.

Hopefully, these brand and email marketing tips and strategies will have provided you with a better understanding of the best methods to use when email mistakes happen, and by following the tips outlined above, you will know the best approach to professionally correct them and all the ways to prevent them from happening again in the future.

However, life can be hectic, and it is easy to neglect your blog. For busy people, blogging can be a huge challenge. It gets pushed down the priority list, resulting in your traffic dropping off and your audience becoming disengaged. It’s important to be consistent and post regular articles. But how can you achieve this when you’re pushed for time? Let’s explore some helpful solutions and ideas below.

Try these top time-saving tips for blogging.

How can you make blogging more efficient?

1. Don't wait to be inspired

One of the best writing tips is, "if you don't write unless you're inspired, you're never going to write." This is especially important with blog writing. If you wait until you're inspired, your busy life will keep getting in the way, and your blog will never get written.

It may sound overly simplistic, but one of the best tips for generating a blog is to sit down and write it. Those first few sentences may be the most challenging. But once you've written them, your brain will click into gear, and you'll write a killer blog in no time.

2. Schedule a Time

When managing scheduling, it's important to distinguish between scheduling when your blog posts go live and scheduling a time to write/work on your blog. Of course, both are important to maintaining and generating a blog. However, scheduling helps you find time in an already crowded diary.

Whilst it’s not necessary to wait for inspiration when writing, it's difficult to "just sit down and write", mainly when life is busy. That's where the importance of scheduling comes in.

Each week, dedicate specific time to work on your blog. It doesn't matter if that's writing up a new post, researching new ideas, or refining the SEO; during your scheduled 'blog' time, all you do is blog related. You don't check emails, answer phone calls, or work on other things.

Scheduling a set time for blogging ensures there are no distractions. This is vital, considering it can take over 23 minutes to get back on track following an interruption to workflow. By working to a schedule, you'll be more productive and more able to devote focused attention to creating high-quality blogs that followers will want to read.

3. Make Use of Batching

Don’t forget batching. As the name suggests, batching is working on your blog posts according to specific tasks in batches. Batching is a known productivity hack that helps you save time, be more productive, and stay focused while delivering a higher content standard. As the name suggests, batching is working on your blog posts according to specific tasks in batches.

It's long been said that multitasking benefits productivity, yet we now know this isn't the case. In fact, recent findings from neuroscience have shown that multitasking makes us less productive. The reality is we don’t multitask. We multiswitch very fast. Not only does this leave us exhausted, but it also makes us more prone to errors and generating sub-standard work. By developing blogs in batches, according to a topic, you focus on one thing at a time, enabling deeper concentration and higher quality output.

To batch well, consider what tasks need to be completed for your blog. Then during your scheduled blog time, dedicate time to work on these tasks. For example, if you need to research new ideas, post to social media, and write blog posts. You'll have a set time to work on those things and only those things. By doing this, you'll find yourself cutting down on distractions, becoming more focused, and being much more productive, which means that you'll be far better at generating blog posts, even when you're busy.

4. Research & Preparation

It's no use scheduling a time to work on your blog if you don't know what to put in it. Therefore, researching your topic and audience is vital for anybody with a blog, whether it's for a business or a hobby.

When creating anything for an audience, you must first understand that audience. This is what makes research a crucial tip for any blogger. Think about who your blog is for, what topics they are interested in, and the questions they may want to be answered. Then deliver content that meets the identified needs.

Once you understand the answers to these questions and have outlined a series of blog posts you know will connect with your audience, the next step is to develop the implementation plan.

It is incredibly difficult to stay on track, delivering within agreed timescales without a plan. It is here that preparation is so important. Every one of the previous blog writing tips mentioned earlier will come in useful. However, it goes further than that. You need to prepare an outline for each of your blog posts, a social media plan, and how to further your reach on the internet. By doing this, you will save time because you will know what you need to accomplish beforehand, meaning when it comes to working on your blog, you’ll be ready to work and understand what needs to be accomplished.

5. Never stop generating new ideas

This might be the best tip of them all! Always keep a notebook with you. Or create a note on your phone. We’ve all had moments where we are out and about, and an amazing idea pops into our head, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone. That could have been an epic article. If you keep making a note of ideas when they come to you, before you know it you’ll have a good selection of potential blog titles.

6. Utilise blog and work scheduling apps and tools

There are tons of blogging handy tools out there which will help speed things up and help you get organized! Apps like Monday, Canva, Tweetdeck and Trello. You can create boards and brief out ideas for posts and then book in a time to write and post them! This will help keep you on track. It’s so important to plan things out in your diary so that you actually follow them up. When planning a blog post, book in time to write, post and promote your blog. There are also some helpful blog idea-generation tools you can take advantage of if coming up with ideas is something you struggle with. Having an idea-generation process that you go through can help save time.

By using all of these time-saving tips for blogging, you'll be sure to be generating fantastic brand content and ideas for your blog, even when you're busy.

So, what can you do to create a brand that’s memorable and which captures your target customers’ attention?

It all starts with a compelling and cogent brand strategy that - if well executed - will help you rise above the rest and successfully communicate your business narrative.

Here are ten things you can do to get started…

1. How do you measure up to the competition?

There’s nothing wrong with sizing up your rivals. Look at their social media activity, scroll through their website and be objective. What are they doing right, and what could they (in other words, you) do better?

Make a list of areas to review. For example, what’s the user experience like on their website? Does it flow, or is it clunky? Perhaps you like their tone of voice and feel like you could adapt it for your brand. Likewise, perhaps their social media feed will inspire your engagement strategy.

To create a brand, you must learn from others. It’s not stealing. It’s research and an essential part of the process.

2. Get out into the digital wilderness and find your lake

Who is your ideal customer, and, just as importantly, where do they hang out? Perhaps they’re business professionals growing their network on LinkedIn or maybe they hang out on Reddit, Instagram, or Pinterest.

The point is not to guess. To create a brand, you need a buyer persona. This will flow a deeper understanding of your customers’ mindsets, leading you to the right online and offline locations.

To build a buyer persona, you could:

• Look at your rivals’ social media feeds and online reviews posted by bona fide customers
• Use keyword research to fathom what sort of questions your ideal customers are asking
• Create focus groups where you interview prospective customers to learn about their needs

The point of this process is to be specific. You can’t appeal to everyone. So don’t feel afraid to exclude customer types from your shortlist.

3. Invest in a professional and memorable business logo

To create a successful brand, you’ll need to hire a graphic designer to jazz up an eye-catching logo that visually summarises your business.

Depending on the size of your business this process can be expensive - ranging from hundreds of pounds through to millions at the top end of the scale.

A logo means nothing on its own but can be a powerful ambassador for your brand if your other strategies are well thought through and executed.

Finally, don’t be afraid to mine your competitors for inspiration and compare various graphic design agencies before committing.

4. Create a catchy tagline that embodies your brand

Stella Artois’s ‘reassuringly expensive’ tagline still slips effortlessly off the tongue - even though the beer manufacturer hasn’t used the wording in its campaigns since 2007.

This world-famous slogan never felt tagged on. Instead, it felt like a natural extension of the brand’s DNA - and that’s precisely why it worked (and continues to influence us 15-years after its demise).

To create a brand slogan:

• Make sure it’s positive and embodies your values
• Use it to show how you’re different from competitors
• Weave in a benefit to catch people’s attention
• Ensure it’s easy to remember

Do all of these things then rinse and repeat, brutally removing any taglines from your shortlist that don’t fulfill these criteria.

5. Review and understand industry trends

Researching industry trends is just as important as understanding your competitors. What changes are influencing your sector - and which of these are most (and least) appealing to your target audience.

To be clear, this isn’t a process you follow just to create a brand. It’s an ongoing one that will help you stay on track and up to date - minimising risk and helping you keep pace with your rivals.

Running cursory searches on Google is a fast, free, and simple way to gather data. But you can also use tools like Answer The Public. Enter a keyword or phrase, and the website will present customer queries about your topic in the form of questions clustered around a wheel.

Can you focus too much on trends? Yes and depending on what you sell. Certain products are timeless and, therefore, impervious to trends.

6. Remember, you’re not creating a ‘bland identity’

A bland brand won’t stand out in a seascape of witty on-point slogans and brightly coloured logos. That doesn’t mean you have to be outrageous. The personality of your brand must be in direct proportion to its tone of voice - else it will feel artificial and tagged on.

Are you risk-takers or risk-averse? Are you raucous and loud or quietly conservative? Drawing up a simple list and jotting down your brand traits will help you evolve a natural language and palette that gel together to create an authentic persona.

Remember: your brand personality should feel natural and never forced. So don’t try too hard.

We’ll help you find your brand voice…

Creating a brand takes time and effort. That’s why it’s often better to work with experts who know the process inside out and who have a provable track record of helping brands like yours to find their inner mojo.

Your company is both a business and a brand. You may already have a recipe for success when it comes to the commercial elements of your business, such as your product or service offering. But without a strong brand identity, you’re sure to fall flat.

Yep, building a brand is an essential ingredient to long term success. But all too often, businesses are understandably busy ticking off their long to-do list that building a brand identity takes a back seat. While you may feel like you’re saving time now, ignoring your brand could take its toll in the future.

What is a brand identity?

Your brand identity goes beyond your logo, style guide and colour palette. The all-encompassing assets communicate who your brand is, what you stand for, how your brand looks, feels, and speaks to customers.

With so much underpinning your brand identity, there’s no wonder it has the power to influence the entire customer experience alongside your reputation and credibility as a business. As such, creating a strong brand identity takes time and research. But when done effectively, you’ll reap the rewards.

Why do you need a strong brand identity?

The online world is a saturated and competitive place. For businesses to compete and thrive, it’s become more important to establish yourself by forming an emotional connection with your audience. A surefire way of doing this is through your marketing and messaging, which your brand should underpin.

While the impact may not be immediately apparent, problems will undoubtedly bubble to the surface in time if you choose to ignore your brand. This will be evident in your audience not being clear on who you are and what you do, resulting in potential shoppers quickly moving away from your business to a competitor.

As one of the most valuable assets in your business, your brand identity is worth investing in. A topic close to our hearts, in this article, we share our six top pointers to strengthen your business brand identity.

1) Get to know your audience

Research underpins everything and is the place to start if you want the best results. How will you create a brand identity that truly aligns with your business and resonates with your customers if you don’t know who you are and what your customers want?

Let’s start with your audience. Take a deep dive into your analytics to understand who your existing customers are and what resonates with them. This could include:

• Age
• Gender
• Demographics
• Likes and dislikes
• Values
• Hobbies
• Preferred products
• How they like to shop
• Popular social channels

2) Get to know your market

Once you understand your customers, it’s time to dive into your market with some competitive research. Look at how businesses are positioning themselves in your industry and where you stand in comparison to them. This could include visual elements alongside their messaging and personality so you have a better idea of how you can stand out.

We’d recommend speaking to those who matter most to your business too: your people. Your brand encompasses your employees, and as they work within the business, they’ll have their own thoughts and opinions on what’s important. Their voices can be valuable assets within this process, helping you understand what’s necessary to establish a strong brand identity.

3) Define your brand values

In order to create a strong brand identity, it’s important to establish why your brand exists. What do you stand for? What are your core values? These questions give your brand a narrative.

To help get you thinking along the right lines, consider:

• What does your brand believe in?
• How does your business solve problems for your audience?
• What value can your brand add to the lives of others?
• Why does your brand exist? Spoiler alert - it’s not just to make money!
• Where do you see your business going in the next year, five years, ten years?
• What inspires your brand and the people within it?

4) Create supporting assets

Once the research and consideration phase has taken place, it’s time to translate your learnings into defined visuals and supporting assets. These assets are a must-have for your internal business, allowing teams to be consistent and aligned in all that they do. It also gives them a ‘brand bible’ of sorts to refer back to any time they’re unsure. Common brand assets include:

• Colour palettes
• Logo and usage
• Typography
• Photography style
• Graphic style
• Tone of voice

Remember, it’s your job to make it easy for customers to understand who you are and what you do. If they’re having to spend time sussing this out, your branding isn’t clear enough yet.

5) Promote your brand

No one knows your business better than you and your team. It’s important to be your own brand ambassador, promoting your identity and positively spreading the word.

Directly interacting with your audience and promoting your brand on a more personalised level will help your business stand out from the crowd. Not only this, it will also build a trustworthy image in the eyes of your customers so you can continue to build a loyal base of brand advocates.

6) Evolve, evolve, evolve

Your brand is a living, breathing thing. It’s important to recognise that your brand identity should evolve over time as your business changes. Once you have the foundations in place it becomes much easier to build from. After you’ve done the research and created the assets, take the time to analyse and refine it on a continuous basis.

This can be done in a number of ways but we believe one method is particularly important: speaking directly to your customers. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback, find out what they want and use this insight to continue refining and strengthening your brand identity.

To sum it up…

Creating a brand identity isn’t a straightforward task, and it certainly won’t be done overnight. Nevertheless, it should be on your priority list if you want to build the foundations for ongoing success. Investing time into building a brand identity will allow you to evolve your offering next to your business to meet and satisfy your customers’ changing behaviours.

With that in mind, how can you refresh your brand in 2022 by learning from last year’s challenges?

Here are some do’s and don’ts you can use to create a roadmap for the year ahead and stand out from the competition.

Do make your brand visible

In these difficult times it’s tempting to hunker down until the storm has passed. But going dark isn’t the solution – because, while you’re waiting, your competitors will be figuring out how to use the crisis to their advantage.

Instead of hiding, refresh your brand using positive messaging that shows you understand the challenges of 2021 but have exciting plans for 2022. Plans that will undoubtedly help your target audience and make their lives easier rather than harder.

If you’re stuck for ideas, look at what other brands are doing and use their marketing strategies as inspiration to help you build a successful strategy for the challenges that lie ahead.

Do master email marketing

Even if budget is limited, email is a simple and effective way to reach prospects. Something as simple as a follow-up message will refresh your audience’s memory and make them more inclined to buy from you when they have a requirement.

If you’re serious about refreshing your brand in 2022, don’t forget about your existing customers. Sending an order confirmation, for example, will show you care and limit the chances of them jumping ship to a competitor.

Overall, email marketing is a simple and effective way to win new business and retain customers (although you will need to invest in a high-quality data list if you don’t yet have a database of emailable contacts).

Do personalise your brand

To cut costs businesses and organisations have had to reduce their workforce – with many ex-employees opting to set up their own businesses instead of seeking full-time employment. The result? More competition for brands like yours and even more choice for your target audience.

As part of your brand refresh strategy for 2022 think about how you’re going to stand out from the crowd. Could video marketing be the answer? That way you could personalise your message and forge stronger connections with your audience.

People prefer to digest video content than read a blog or article. So, if you really want to overcome the challenges of last year, invest in basic equipment, create a video content plan, and start filming.

Don’t copy your competitors

In these challenging times brands want to appear sympathetic to their customers’ plights. As such, 2021 saw a slew of messages and images centred around people trapped at home. Every company cared. And each one had a solution carefully tailored to make their audience’s lives that little bit easier.

In the end, these messages blurred into one and became so much white noise. Everyone was saying the same thing and so no particular message stood out. If you’re serious about refreshing your brand in 2022, make sure your content is authentic and nothing like your competitors.

Don’t talk about the pandemic or Brexit. Or, if you do, find your own unique spin on the topic that’ll grab your audience’s attention and make them more likely to call when the time comes. That way your messaging won’t become lost in the melee of so-so marketing content unimaginatively churned out by your rivals.

Don’t focus too much on the past

The global pandemic is far from over. But do you really want to keep reminding your customers about how terrible things were in 2021? Why not give your brand a boost instead by looking ahead and anticipating how things could look post-pandemic.

By focussing on the future, you’ll elevate your business to a higher level by injecting a note of positivity into your messaging. You’ll also establish yourselves as thought leaders in your sector – meaning serious business owners will make you their first port of call.

Make preparing for tomorrow part of your 2022 brand refresh strategy and you’ll be able to overcome past and present challenges while also upping your brand game.

Don’t underestimate the power of trends 

2021 was a challenging year but could you have better weathered the storm by understanding newly emerging trends and using them advantageously? That’s not to suggest jumping on the proverbial bandwagon for the sake of it is wise. The trend itself must create a segue between your brand and its customers – else it will add no value for either party. 

But harnessing the power of a brand-new trend before it catches fire could see your business leading the pack and carving out a reputation as a trendsetter rather than a meek follower which apes the activities of others.

As part of your 2022 brand refresh strategy take care to audit your existing marketing activities too. Are they still on trend or have your tactics become passe – to the extent they’re devaluing the power of your messaging and losing you business?

The next step

Turning the challenges of 2021 into profitable positives in 2022 will be no mean feat for your business. And the consequences of a bad brand refresh could set your organisation or business back months. Wouldn’t you rather have an experienced agency in your corner that can solve these problems by creating a solution designed to help you reach your marketing goals.

Contact us to learn more and refresh your brand the right way in 2022. We’d love to help you get ahead of the curve and achieve your strategic aims.

If you’re new to the market or looking to stay on-trend, here are the adaptations your brand needs to make in 2022.

Looking at your environmental impact

Climate change is one of the biggest talking points right now, and during an age of conscious consumption, it’s a factor to be aware of with your brand. You need to look at how sustainable your brand is in terms of reducing environmental costs when doing business.

This can cover many things, including the way you market yourself, caring for your employees is, how your product is being manufactured/delivered and how ethical the service is you’re providing. Sustainability links to resilience. Resilience is all about adapting to the times, and that’s what you want your brand to do if you want to resonate with a modern audience.

Showcasing a more authentic voice

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, and it’s the same with working with other businesses. They want to work with you because of who you are and what you stand for. This is becoming more apparent today in a more conscious and self-aware world.

Authenticity is what makes brands successful and helps other businesses know who and what they’re connecting with so they can link up with like-minded individuals who share the same values. An authentic voice is what more businesses are putting out there in terms of a marketing strategy through social media, the content they share, and generally, how they showcase themselves online.

Brands need an obvious purpose

The authenticity of a brand feeds into the idea of one having a purpose. Brands should always have a purpose and a reason to exist. However, this meaning is becoming even more significant in 2022. Businesses and consumers like to connect with brands on a deeper level. This means promoting your purpose loud and clear, an important purpose, one that has a transformation about it. It could be a better way to do something or aiding helping the world; the purpose needs to be strong and meaningful in order for your brand to stand out.

Integration is significant

Working with others has never been more important in a world that is constantly evolving. Knowledge is power, after all, and that’s why it’s so significant to co-operate and integrate with other businesses or outsource as much as possible to help work together in solving business challenges. 2022 is a time where the world has never been more integrated and collaborative.

Social media is key for businesses

Social media is the marketing tactic every business should already be a part of as it’s the biggest tool out there these days in terms of reaching and targeting your key audience. The platforms and the possibilities you can do with social media are endless.

Gone are the days where we telephone a company to contact them, we simply head straight for a social media platform and direct message with our query. It’s quick and easy, the way many of us operate in getting the answers we need. Communication is expected to be instant, the way social media platforms are used from one user to the next. You want to be at the forefront of the audience you’re looking to attract and social media will get you there, when planned out the right way.

Short-form video content should be a top priority

This leads us onto video content. Audiences will be very receptive to short-form video content in 2022. We live in an age where people want answers quickly and their attention spans are short, which means to maximise that, you need to be creating short-form videos to get their attention. The popularity of this trend has been seen on Tik Tok with its growth in popularity over the last two years, known as the 4th most popular social media platform in the world. Plus with Instagram introducing their Reels feature shows the impact this platform has had for the wider market.

Wellbeing should be in the forefront of what you do

If the pandemic taught us anything, it taught us how we need to care for ourselves and our minds, and that goes hand in hand with wellbeing. Mental health over the years has finally gained the name it deserves and the importance of it for everyone around us. As a brand, you want to put policies in place that make your staff's wellbeing a priority and how you share that message within your brand values too.

The way we work

Office-based jobs and full-time employment are adapting to the new normal. During lockdowns, many of us have adapted to working from the home way of life and experiencing ownership and more freedom in our job roles, that many employees don’t want to go back to how it was. Due to this change, the future of how people want to work is evolving. Brands that stay on top of working trends and meet the new demands of the workforce will build a strong employee reputation within their industries.

Flatter structure in organisations

What we mean by this, is instead of the traditional pyramid system of the workplace hierarchy, a flattened version so people are viewed on the same level - and therefore, treated as equals, rather than one employee being superior to another. This flattened structure is linked to the flexible workforce idea and being adaptable to industry trends with more input from ‘smaller’ roles in the company.

If you’re looking for guidance in implementing adaptations for your brand, get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you.

For effective content marketing, you must evolve with the market, adapt to high-impact trends and use techniques that will help you to reach the biggest audience.

In this post, we explore some of the biggest trends for content marketing in 2022. Read on to learn more about the most popular up-and-coming content techniques.

Interactive Content

Interactive content helps to encourage user participation. This can be through the use of polls, questionnaires, quizzes or the option to make choices and explore scenarios. Interactive content helps to optimise audience engagement and experience by making the consumer think and feel things. This leads to a stronger consumer-brand connection.

Here are some useful ways to boost your interactive content in 2022. You could also consider using tools to help you interact with your customers more. Ion Interactive offers customisable templates as well as other useful resources.

Empathetic Content Marketing

Another key technique for 2022 is the need for copy that focuses on user experiences. You can achieve this by putting your customer at the heart of your marketing strategy. Treating your target audience as humans instead of potential buyers is crucial. Start focusing on being authentic in 2022, and reap the benefits of your labour!

Google’s target for searchable content is known as E-A-T, (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). This concept highlights how the qualities at the centre of empathetic content are embedded into the SEO algorithm. So it’s not surprising that experts believe value-driven content will become the norm in 2022.

How can I achieve this?

Gather feedback from analytics, reviews, social media, and questionnaires. Use your findings to create original, believable and valuable copy for your customers. This will help to prevent pushing prospective users into the arms of your competitors. Good content requires context, as this is what provides value to a reader.

To learn more, check out Joanna Wiebe’s LinkedIn Conversion Copywriting course. This will teach you how to listen to the voice of your customers and write copy that turns prospects into business.

Video Marketing

Videos can convey complicated ideas easily, which makes them a crucial marketing technique. Videos are a solid medium to engage the viewer with the benefits on offer. They also offer a good insight into your company culture.

According to social media marketing statistics, video ads are more engaging than still images. In 2022, the top marketing trend is social media videos, particularly TikTok and Instagram reels. Taking advantage of trends from these platforms will be beneficial to your content marketing strategy.

Marketing trend data on one survey reveals that 76% of marketers consider video to be the most effective format for content. With this in mind, it is clear that video content is a rising star, and that won’t change in 2022. If anything, it will become more pertinent.

Consider using videos, even if it is just in the first step of your content plan. You could combine content marketing techniques, for example interactive videos to engage consumers and encourage them to act (CTA) in a certain way.

Image, or Visual Searches

In the past, SEO has focused solely on keyword search. But images can be a huge and untapped source of power. In 2021, visual search capabilities became available on many applications and platforms. This allowed users to search for specific pictures.

Visual searches are an important technique for your marketing strategy. This is especially true when images can help to increase searches into your product. This is helpful when a consumer doesn’t know the exact name of your product, or when they are looking to purchase the subject of a photo. Start building image search capabilities into your website and product pages now. Research suggests visual searches will become a 40 billion industry by 2025.

Audio Content

Continuing on the theme of engaging the consumer’s senses, audio is set to be a key trend in 2022. This is thanks to the rising popularity of podcasts. In the USA, people spent more than 15 billion hours listening to podcasts in 2021. What’s more, 20% of people bought a product or service because they heard about it in a podcast they listened to. The audio platform continues to offer opportunities for content marketers, and that is expected to increase in 2022.

Usage of branded audio content is also expected to be on the rise this year. The popularity of audio chatroom, Clubhouse, highlights the power that audio content can bring to content marketing.

AI Technology

Around 85 million people used augmented reality in 2021 - that’s more than a 50% increase since 2017. These overwhelming statistics show that the metaverse ought to be part of your content marketing strategy in 2022.

How can I incorporate AI into my content marketing strategy?

You can use AI to create optimised posts, run plagiarism and grammar checks, analyse data - with an emphasis on pattern recognition - and integrate AI-powered chatbots.

Chatbots combine AI technology and interactive content, allowing users to interact with companies. Companies can then collect data, which helps them to better understand users.

Consider ways to start incorporating AI into your content marketing strategy. You might start by introducing chatbots and move outwards from there. The aim is to attract and engage with your target audience.

If you take one thing from this article, it should be that quality and variety are key to your content marketing strategy - not volume.

Start challenging yourself and your team to consider how your content is being presented now and what you might do differently. Consider how many platforms you use and harness the power of new techniques to make your content more compelling and authentic in 2022.

For example, when you think of Apple, you might think of words like ‘beautiful’, ‘aspirational’ or ‘imaginative’.

When you think of Tesla, ‘exciting’, ’visionary’ or ‘eco-friendly’ might come to mind. You might even think of Elon Musk - yes, even people, such as a company’s founder, can be a part of a brand’s identity too!

Building a brand takes time. But maintaining it so that customers don’t forget about it is a lifelong labour of love.    

That’s where brand management comes in. Fortunately, this happens to be one of the things we do best which means we’ve got some great tips to share on how to do this well. Read on to find out what these are and what a good brand management process looks like.

What is brand management?

Put simply, brand management is the process of building a holistic 360 view of a brand’s identity across all touchpoints and channels. It’s also about maintaining this identity. Some of the activities involved in brand management include:

• Creating or redefining a brand’s identity
• Repositioning a brand within the marketplace
• Maintaining brand characteristics and assets

Brand management isn’t always a straight path forward. In fact, it’s more like a guided journey that brings the concept of a brand together. Every company will have its own method, process and set of techniques for dealing with its own brand. That’s part of what makes every brand so special and unique.

Some tips for getting brand management right

While every company will have its own way of handling branding, there are a few key things to consider. When applied, these can make a material difference in how a brand is maintained and communicated for success.

Don’t just create a USP - use it to your advantage

Creating a USP, or Unique Selling Proposition, is one of the most important pillars to brand success. But what happens once you’ve created it? 

Do you leave it on a shelf never to be touched again, or do you shout it from the rooftops?

The answer is probably somewhere between these two, though it’s definitely not ‘leave it on a shelf’. Your brand messaging or USP should form the backbone of all your marketing efforts. In addition to this, there'll be countless opportunities for you to integrate that message into what you’re doing - think campaigns, special projects, even packaging or user experience copy. All of these present a prime opportunity to reflect your brand values and message. 

So, make sure your USP is baked into everything you do and not something you come up with at a workshop once and forget about weeks later.

Evaluate and then re-evaluate always

When it comes to your brand, evaluation is something that should always be happening. A mistake we see a lot of companies make is treating their brand strategy evaluation as a one-and-done. Instead, evaluation should be a sustained process that allows for reappraisal as you go:

• Keep tabs on-brand assets - Create a list of these as you build and accumulate them.
• Maintain an open dialogue with teams - Check in with those responsible for assets and help them re-evaluate these constantly. 
• Re-evaluate and keep re-evaluating - Whether it’s your brand strategy, process for maintaining assets, or the assets themselves, it’s important to keep re-evaluating these on a regular basis.

Don’t let brand assets gather dust

Whether it’s your visual elements, social channels, website, or brand messaging, many things can be considered ‘brand assets’.

And these assets are going to need more than just a little TLC. 

Brand assets need attention on a regular, sometimes even a daily basis, to ensure that things stay consistent and in line with your overall brand vision. For instance, you might want to consider creating guidelines and rules for how visual elements are used or updated or checking that tone and messaging is consistent across all copy. 

Wondering what a successful brand management process looks like? Every company will have its own version of this, but here are a few important stages we encourage you to keep in mind.

The Brand management process

Start with Purpose

 - the discovery phase

Remember Simon Sinek’s theory about ‘Starting with Why’? Well, we believe every brand management process should start with a discovery phase that seeks to answer this question.

What we’re getting at here is the purpose behind your brand - how it was formed, what it looks like currently, and where it is headed in the future. 

This is where our own discovery work and brand workshops begin. We start by gathering knowledge about your brand, touching on everything from your vision, products, and services to the culture of your company and niche market space. We then develop better insight into your overall business and marketing strategies as well as who your customers and competitors are. 

All of this allows us to discover what drives your brand vision before we begin to look at where it exists within the great marketplace.

Define who you are 

- the positioning phase

Once you’ve developed a better understanding of your brand, it’s time to define its position in the marketplace. This stage is all about how your customer sees your brand and where they are likely to place it in their mind’s eye. 

First, you need to dive deeper with some analysis around your target customer. Examining the buyer’s journey and pulling out key stats such as metrics, levels of awareness, familiarity, and consideration will help you gain valuable insight into how your customer sees you.

At this point, it’s time to start shaping your brand’s identity. We like to start with essentials like values, brand pillars and key differentiators and work our way up to USP, tone of voice, and personality.

Create, create, create 

- the creation & design phase 

Now that you’ve taken some time to define your brand, you can move into the creation phase. 

Perhaps the most exciting part, this is where you really get to see your brand come to life. 

Like a painter layering paint and colour over their initial sketch, you’ll be adding more meaning and context to the ideas you’ve come up with so far.

The characteristics you work on here, from the brand name to its personality, tone of voice (TOV), key messages and communication strategy, will only serve to build on what you’ve just done. 

This is where design steps into the picture as well. Design can, in fact, stand alone as its own phase given how powerful visual imagery is at capturing audience attention but is often best when done in tandem with the creation of other assets.

Track Results 

- the implementation phase

Last, but certainly not least, it’s important to track results. 

In fact, it’s best to set this process up before any promotional campaigns, advertising or publicity are launched. That will give you a chance to get clear on what KPIs, metrics and targets to measure for success. 

Make sure these make sense within the greater context of your business plan and sales & marketing strategy. 

This is where you get to use all the tools at your disposal to track how marketing efforts are performing across all channels. While online channels are critical here, it’s important not to forget about offline marketing efforts as well. Any customer touchpoint is a source of data that tells a story about what your customer is experiencing. 

To sum everything up

Branding isn’t a straightforward process, but it’s an exciting and dynamic one. Get it right, and you’ve got a brand that will evolve beautifully alongside your business and changing customer behaviour. 

It’s true. When done right, email marketing presents a phenomenal opportunity to build direct links with customers that can generate real ROI. And that makes email an excellent tool for communicating what your brand is all about. 

Why is brand identity important for email marketing? 

Let’s start with why brand identity is so important to build in the first place. 

Customers return to businesses that they like and trust. By establishing a brand image and design system that’s recognizable and publishing valuable content pieces, your company is positioning itself as a source of credibility to the consumer. 

Viewers, readers and purchasers start to see your business as an entity that’s both reputable and trustworthy and something they can instantly recognize. 

There are so many different ways to build brand identity, especially in the digital age. One of the most cost-effective ways of doing this is via email. Sending your customers emails at set intervals allows you to reach out to them regularly with offers and information about your company and brand.  At the same time, you get to convey your brand values and what makes you different, whether that be through copy, images or design elements.

Email can be a powerful digital marketing tool but it's also very easy to get things wrong, especially when it comes to establishing your brand. Here are a few of our best tips for leaving readers with a strong impression of your brand via email.

Our top tips for building brand identity through email marketing 

Give them a big warm welcome 

Did you know that users take roughly 0.05 seconds to decide whether a website is worth scrolling through?

First impressions really do count, and that goes for email too. One of the best ways of making a strong first impression is through your Welcome series. This email or sequence of emails is what you send to new subscribers when they first sign up. And if you want it to be love at first sign up for your customers, then here are a few ways to stand out:

• Tell them how much you’re looking forward to having them as a subscriber
• Write in an engaging and friendly tone
• Touch on everything they need to know to have a pleasant onboarding experience

Channel your personality and unique brand voice

Every brand has its own unique personality and tone, and emails are a great place to channel this. Whether your brand is serious, or irreverent, warm or energetic, you’ll want this to come across at every touchpoint. 

While it’s worth respecting certain universalities, such as ensuring your Welcome series sounds friendly and helpful, you should see every email as an opportunity to inject a bit of personality. This can make all the difference in making your brand more memorable so that customers aren’t likely to forget you.  

Choose a template and stick to it

People love patterns. In fact, as humans, we’re wired to pick up on them, which is why your emails should follow a consistent template. Whether it’s the same colour or design scheme, a similar structure or type of information your customers have gotten used to receiving, this is one of the best ways of building trust with your audience.

Some things to consider include:

• Are you using your logo in the same place?
• Is your colour palette consistent?
• Do the buttons, colours, and designs gel with your website?
• Are you providing information customers have come to expect (e.g. a weekly blog, roundup or tips for troubleshooting)?

While there’s always room for variety and surprise to delight, keeping certain things consistent will help increase brand loyalty. 

Show up in their inbox consistently

Along with using the same templates and design scheme, it’s best to establish a regular sending interval. 

By sending your emails on the same day and at the same time each week or month, you’ll be establishing a pattern and routine for your subscribers. They’ll come to expect and look forward to opening your emails on a regular basis. If you go radio silent for weeks only to send them five emails in one go, they’re likely to get a little confused. 

Make a personal connection

One of the most exciting things about email marketing is that there’s a lot you can do to make things personal. Segmentation is the process of sending out targeted content to individual subscribers depending on their age, location, gender or industry. It makes readers feel special and like you’ve really taken the time to get to know them. 

Don’t oversell 

Email anxiety is a very real thing. This can range from being a mild annoyance to people losing genuine interest (and even trust) in your brand. That makes people much more sensitive to emails that are tirelessly promoting products or services.

By creating emails that are educational and deliver real value, you’ll be building a relationship with your audience based on trust and integrity that will only serve to benefit your brand. Of course, it’s important to send the odd more sales-oriented email now and again, but you should send these at the right time once your audience is primed.  

Create a fluid customer journey

Remember, email marketing is only one piece of the entire customer journey for your brand. For instance, you may want readers to click through to a landing or offer page. They’ll also be taken to different pages when they sign up or decide to unsubscribe. 

Ensuring that your customer experience is consistent across all of these points of contact will only strengthen your brand’s identity in their mind.

Top takeaways

When done right, email marketing can have a direct impact on your company’s bottom line, as well as the reputation of your brand. By employing all the tactics we’ve just described, it can be one of the best investments you could make for your business.

Clients and consumers now have the gift of choice. This is true for every sector. The market for just about anything is oversaturated. There are hundreds of businesses doing the exact same thing. If a brand doesn’t align with a purchaser’s precise requirements or exact set of values, you don’t need to look far to find a competitor that fits the bill.

That means that branding has become a far more significant stage of business development. It also means that marketing and branding agencies need a much better understanding of the clients that they take on. And that’s where brand immersion comes in.

What is brand immersion?

Brand immersion is the process of an agency fully immersing themselves in a client’s world. It involves in-depth research into the client that they take on; into who they are and what they do, the products or services they sell, the clients or customers they’re selling to, the sector they operate in and even the competitors that operate in the same field.

Brand immersion could involve in-depth market research, digging in deep to thoroughly understand the client. It could even involve a more hands-on approach, with the agency interacting physically with the services offered by their client. 

What could a business expect from brand immersion?

This kind of brand immersion could look like the agency trying out the product itself, but would often run deeper. It would involve the agency meeting with the team, but this wouldn’t just be limited to meetings. 

Imagine the agency seeing the production line and learning the exact process involved in creating their products. Or the agency visiting venues for a hospitality chain, speaking with the actual team who are working rather than only communicating with the marketing executives. 

The nature of digital marketing is, of course, digital. But that doesn’t mean the physical reality of a brand and their product or service is any less important. Brand immersion allows agencies to develop a unique, more personal experience with the brands, but it also usually involves travel. Agency teams must go out of their way, travelling across the UK or even on occasion to other countries - it takes a huge amount of effort and commitment on both parties. But the results are worth it.

Building a cohesive brand

One of the main benefits of brand immersion is that it removes the possibility of disconnect between brand and agency. 

For agencies, it’s exciting to take on new clients. We enjoy sinking our teeth into new projects and new work. Every good, reputable agency should treat their client’s brand with care and careful consideration. For clients, this period is also exciting, but it comes with a degree of anxiety because they are entrusting the business they have so carefully built and invested so much into with a new team of people.

There’s margin for human error: where the agency misinterprets an essential part of a brand; where an agency misconstrues their brief; when the brand itself misunderstands a service that’s offered; when communication fails, or it’s simply a case of not providing adequate resources for the agency to properly understand a brand or its mission. 

When this occurs, it can result in a disconnect. Think of a disjointed brand identity, where your digital presence doesn’t quite align with your physical. Think of a website that doesn’t match up with the rest of your marketing tools. Worst case, imagine a perfectly cohesive set of marketing materials - that don’t actually match up with the vision you had for your business. 

Why your brand identity actually matters

Maintaining a cohesive brand identity across all of your marketing materials - your website, social channels, email communications, even offline materials like brochures or business cards - is so important. 

Firstly, your branding is your first impression. Secondly, it’s a lasting one. Having strong, cohesive branding is imperative in making your brand recognisable and memorable - in fact, it can even encourage brand loyalty as customers and clients are more likely to remember your brand and choose it over competitors. 

Brand trust can also be boosted simply by having high-quality, aesthetically pleasing branding and brand materials, like logos, websites, fonts and graphic design images. Quality, strong and thoughtful branding can help to prove that your business is authoritative and professional, but it can also demonstrate your values, ethos and wider mission as a brand. This is particularly important, given that 71% of consumers prefer choosing brands that align with their values. 

Clever, careful branding is absolutely vital. So, to go back to our earlier point: what happens if an agency misinterprets what your brand stands for? What if they get it wrong? 

Why brand immersion is key to creating a cohesive brand 

Brand immersion negates the possibility of an agency getting it all wrong. Email communication, Zoom calls and even face-to-face meetings leave room for error. People can easily misinterpret the same set of values, or have different perspectives of what the brand’s mission really entails.

With the process of immersion, an agency can truly understand the values behind a brand. When we immerse ourselves in the world of your unique brand, we’ll come to understand its individual beliefs and behaviours, the story behind your brand that makes it what it is today. Its history and its future, past and present. Your goals and how you plan to achieve them - and how we can help you devise a brand strategy that does precisely this. Your clients or customers, how they perceive you, and how you want to be perceived. We’ll work with you to find the best way to reach them.

And then we’ll apply what we’ve learned to ensure all of your branding and marketing materials are strong, cohesive, and demonstrate the very best of your brand’s identity.

If you’re new to user journey mapping or are unsure where to begin, our guide explains what it is and how you can use it. 

What is a user journey map?

The user journey map is a visualisation of the relationship between a user and a product/brand over a period of time. It is used across many different channels, and the channels you utilise all depends on what your business stands for. User journey maps look different for every business and can come in all forms, but the baseline is to represent a timeline of touchpoints between a user and a product.

This map can help user experience designers see the journey from a user’s point of view. That way, they can change the way the website looks, or implement strategies to make your product and how it's purchased more effective for the customer, and increase sales/leads for your business.

What business goal does this journey map support?

Journey maps are created with a business goal in mind but can vary depending on what you’re trying to achieve, and should align for the full effect. The map could be in aid of learning more about who your customer is and what they’re most interested in, purchasing behaviours, or discovering why different parts of the user experience aren’t effective.

The benefit of a journey map is huge in terms of business goal support. It can help show you which touchpoints of the user experience need work and you can then create a strategy and ideas on how to improve that. It can help you learn more about your customer base and target them better through marketing strategies. Also, an effective journey map can help refocus your thoughts and visions of your company and help you understand your data a lot more.

How do I begin creating a user journey map? 

When beginning to start your journey map creation, there are a few things to consider including the perspective, scenario, user’s emotions, touchpoints, and channels. 

The first step is to think of a narrative or the journey a said customer would go on. For example, if Bob is looking to get an insurance quote for his next holiday in a few days’ time. What process will he take to search for it? You need to think about how this typical persona’s point of view and use that as a baseline to plan out your map.

Then you’ll need to get in deeper with that example customer to what and why they need to purchase and consider their emotions to, put yourself in their position, and do this all based on market research too. You’re essentially thinking about a situation that hasn’t happened yet in order to find gaps in the user experience timeline, and then take the right course of action to optimise the experience for the user - putting you ahead of your competitors. 

Journey maps will look different for everyone but it’s about the planning process to give you the right results and help yourself help customers.

Who will use the journey map?

Journey maps are hugely beneficial for your team as a whole, especially UX designers. With the creation of a map, you establish an aligned mental model for the entire team, and therefore, it gives you all more scope on who your user is and what they need to really maximise their experience when purchasing your product or service.

Who will use it? Isn’t one singular person. Journey maps are put in place for a wider understanding of a problem across an organisation and then, an issue for you to work on as a team. It can help you build a shared vision on how to solve an issue for your users - because without a shared vision and having an aligned goal for journey mapping, improving the customer experience won’t take place.

Journey maps will help your team have a clearer vision and work together to create the same goal - it’s a universal and crucial map for everyone.

Who is it about and what experience does it address?

The journey map as mentioned previously is about users who are looking to buy your brand and service, and how they would interact with you. It addresses the experience of the scenarios you paint out of the typical personas you’re targeting. This could be a mum in their thirties looking to buy an eco-friendly toy or a teenager shopping for the latest mobile phone. Whatever the scenario, the journey map will plan out the touchpoints of what that customer would do to get to the end product and point out any missing parts that you can fill in and make the experience better as a whole.

The journey map is a visual approach to this and can help a product team find an answer to ‘what if?’ questions of the user experience and can reveal opportunities to address customers’ pain points.

How to create a successful journey map?

A successful journey map requires well-thought-out planning, collaborative input, and well-defined goals. It’s not a quick thought process as it can really help you and your business figure out what is missing in the customer experience.

There are a few things to consider for a successful journey map including the truth, collaboration, and jumping too quickly. As easy as it is to create a persona to map the journey map around, there’s no point as there’s nothing to back it up. What you need to do is source some research for your target market and base a journey map around that, rather than what you think your customer would be. Collaboration is key with journey mapping because two pairs of eyes are better than one and you’ll have a different perspective that way, and can create a more thoughtful plan. And, another thing to consider is taking the plan slowly. Don’t rush to the visual side of it, you need to ensure your stats, research and thoughts are correct before you go there.

Journey mapping is a worthwhile task and something essential to implement for the optimum level of success for your business.

If you’re looking for a branding agency to help you scope out your journey map, get in touch with us today. Or, if you’re interested to learn more about user journey mapping, Nielsen Norman Group has been the master for this since the 1990s.

Canva, in case you’re yet to discover it, is an online design and publishing tool. Easy to use, with a wide range of free tools, Canva allows anyone to test out and grow their graphic design skills. It can be used to create graphics for social media platforms, marketing materials, as well as posters, logos, presentations - even custom products, like t-shirts, canvas prints and custom mugs.

Canva has thousands of free design templates and tools, making it one of the most accessible graphic design platforms out there. But it also has paid plans available, most commonly used by agencies, which unlock all of Canva’s tools, features and templates. It’s a valuable asset in the world of digital marketing.

Canva is used by both start-ups and large-scale corporations 

Canva, founded in 2013 by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, is now one of Australia’s most valuable start-ups. It’s a big accomplishment, one the company says is owed, in part, to the pandemic. 

With more companies around the world required to work from home, Canva became the perfect solution to ensure a continued output of high quality, branded design materials. And, as a result, profits plus investments have continued to skyrocket.

Canva has over 60 million active users in 190 countries. Within that is 500,000 paying customers, including corporate clients like Zoom and Paypal. Canva is placed in a unique position within the industry, wherein its services are beneficial both to the newest, smallest start-ups, as well as booming white-collar corporations.

What are the benefits of Canva?

So, what makes this such a valuable resource? And why are so many companies opting to use Canva instead of the myriad of other graphic design tools out there? 

Canva is free

Of course, one of its most compelling features is that it is free to use. And this in particular is one of the reasons why it is so popular with start-ups.

When your business is first starting out, budgets are always that little bit tighter. But design and branding never get any less important. Canva allows businesses to develop their sense of brand identity, and release high-quality imagery without spending a large amount of money. Those funds can then be channelled into other areas of the business, meanwhile, the brand can continue to reap the benefits of utilising consistent, quality branding, and eye-catching designs.

Canva doesn’t require previous design experience

Design software can be notoriously difficult to use - but Canva isn’t. This is another one of its biggest perks. With Canva, no previous graphic design skills or experience is needed. With so many tools and templates available, anyone can utilise Canva’s bank of fonts and images to create designs that look professional - and true to your brand’s image.

Canva is user-friendly and accessible 

Canvas has a user-friendly and simple to understand interface - intensive technical knowledge isn’t needed to navigate it. Impressive, engaging designs can be created in just a few short clicks, and, being simple to use and understand, it doesn’t require hours of tutorials or trial and error. 

Canva has a wide variety of resources and a library of backgrounds, images, fonts, stickers and templates; with no experience, you can even create videos or GIFs (but don’t worry, tutorials are available should you need them.)

With Canva, the only hurdle should be your own creativity. But as a business grows, it may be that you grow tired of the limitations placed on a free Canva account. Though there is a huge amount of variety - particularly given that it’s free to use - certain resources are only available through a paid plan. Perhaps you decide that you’d like a little more choice. If that’s the case, you might need to look into one of Canva’s paid plans.

What are Canva’s paid plans and are they worth investing in?

Canva has two types of paid plan: Pro and Enterprise. Pro is suitable for start-ups or businesses with small teams, whereas Enterprise is more commonly used for large-scale organisations, where you have lots of different team members, clients, and need to create a large number of materials very quickly.

The benefits of Canva Pro and Enterprise

Canva Pro can accommodate a small team of people, and is reasonably priced at £10.99 per month for up to 5 people, while others can be added to your plan afterwards for an additional cost.

Pro has everything that the Free plan does, but without the limitations. Pro can offer over 100 million premium stock photos, videos, audio clips and graphics, alongside more than 610,000 templates (Canva for free is limited to 250,000 templates). 

Pro has some other really useful features too, like the ability to schedule social media content to 8 platforms, saveable designs that your team can use as templates, as well as 100GB of cloud storage. Pro is particularly useful for branding; you can easily save and apply colours, logos and fonts for either your brand or specifically for a campaign with over 100 Brand Kits.

Canva Enterprise, meanwhile, is designed for much bigger brands to organise their brand and scale their content. It has all the same features of Pro, but has more brand kits available to express and define your brand’s visual identity.

It allows organisers to control their team’s access to apps, graphics, and fonts, with brand controls to keep things cohesive. It also has unlimited storage, built-in workflows, and template locking to ensure branding stays consistent across all design materials.

Why are branding and design so important?

The success of Canva proves just how important branding and design have become for businesses in the digital age.

Having consistent branding is absolutely vital for your business. It helps audiences recognise you, familiarising themselves with your brand, as well as its mission, products or services. It conveys personality and values, which can endear consumers to your brand and can encourage loyalty. 

Research suggests that 80% of people are likely to remember something that they see, while just 10% will remember things that they hear, and 20% will remember something they read. That means visual branding is pivotal in communicating with your audience, while design is fundamental in the success of your promotional tools.

Canva may be easy to use, but that doesn’t mean it can garner the same results as a branding or design agency - and that’s where we come in. If you don’t have the time, we can help you reach your full design potential. Get in touch to find out more.

But, sometimes content can fall flat in one or all of these departments. 

Luckily, however, there are surefire ways to ensure that your business’ content is nothing short of impactful, relevant, and engaging - regardless of when it is read.

Intrigued? Perhaps our introduction to evergreen content can help improve your business’ content strategy.

What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen often evokes imagery of ferns and conifers and so forth. However, evergreen content borrows from the ‘all-year-round lifespan of these plants - instead applying this to content.

Essentially, evergreen content is search-optimised content that stays relevant regardless of when it is written and who is reading it, ensuring it is fresh and innovative all year round. Sure, all content that is published online may have some sense of sustainability, as a blog post or article doesn’t dissipate after publishing, however, these posts often age relatively quickly. Some dusty old content becomes old news, containing elements that are no longer relevant or up to date. And guess, what, Google recognises this. In fact, they tend to actually reward sites where they know old content has had a facelift. In a nutshell, Google loves fresh content. 

Evergreen content has the sustainability and immortalisation of online publishing, but it doesn’t age or become irrelevant - instead, it continues to accrue search traffic and views for prolonged periods of time following publishing.

Your interest may be piqued, but you may also be questioning how you can create evergreen content when there is an excess of content in every aspect of our lives. Well, there are various typical formats, themes, and optimization tools used in evergreen content to ensure that it stays relevant and accurate for an extended period of time.

Evergreen vs Timely 

To help prompt a better understanding of what evergreen content is, perhaps looking at the opposite of evergreen content will provide a sturdy basis. The opposite of evergreen content is referred to as ‘timely content’, simply due to the way in which the content has a limited shelf life as the nature of the content will lose accuracy, validity, or relevance as time goes on.

Examples of timely content include: 

• Statistical reports.
• News articles.
• Content focusing on trends or current pop culture.

As statistics, news, and trends all evolve and develop over time, pieces of content focusing specifically on them will quickly become outdated.

However, evergreen content doesn’t focus on these factors, instead looking towards topics and themes that retain relevance for an extended duration of time.

Examples of evergreen content include:

• How-to lists
• The best…of type posts.
• The history of…X, Y, Z
• Everything you need to know about... 

There are several various types of evergreen content often following a similar format to the above due to the way in which these content briefs often encapsulate a specific set of information that won’t lose relevance or accuracy as time goes on.

How to Create Evergreen Content

If your business is looking towards evergreen content implementation, then often this process can be daunting. Simply because there may be an additional level of scrutiny as you review old content that can only be described as ‘outdated’.

However, by introducing evergreen content into your content strategy, your older content doesn’t have to date or be buried amongst repetitive new posts that aim to pique the interest of viewers simply in the moment. But you may be wondering, how do I do this? Well, we’re here to help ease your worries and guide you through evergreen content creation.

Essentially, there are five primary reasons why your business needs evergreen content. By assessing these reasons in relation to your business targets, it’s easy to begin the evergreen content creation process. The reasons are:

• To drive regular traffic to your website.
• To improve your search engine rankings.
• To drive prospects to your sales process.
• To position your brand at the forefront of the industry.
• To connect with your clients, customers, and stakeholders.

Drawing upon the above reasons, there isn’t a business who doesn’t want to improve the mentioned factors. So, creating a blueprint for evergreen content is essential.

Targeting

Evergreen content doesn’t have to be overly complicated, entirely original, or completely groundbreaking - instead, it has to be targeted to the right audience. By conducting some simple market research, it can be relatively easy to locate key phrases and words relating to your business or it’s respective industry. 

By finding these phrases and keywords, it's easy to begin SEO optimizing your content. By identifying relevant and highly searched phrases and words, you can begin to regularly integrate these into the content. This can help boost on-page optimization and (with additional support from SEO specialists) help improve your search rankings, helping to drive more traffic to your website.

Keep it Simple

Often people think in order to attract the interest of potential customers, they need to sound extremely formal and complicated. But this isn’t the case.

Sometimes, toning down the technical language and loosening up a bit, can be exactly what your evergreen content needs to thrive and continue attracting more viewers and traffic in the long run.

Being relatable and friendly always goes far!

Repurpose

Don’t be afraid to repurpose your excellent evergreen content! Sometimes rewording, rewriting, publishing in different formats, and ‘spinning’ your content can help regularly drive traffic to your website. Also repurposing your content can help increase the exposure of your content due to the way in which it is remodelled and published in different formats.

The Take Home

Now that you know exactly what evergreen content is, how it can help your business, and how to create it - what’s stopping you?

Evergreen content can unlock the full potential of your content strategy, whilst improving the amount of traffic, exposure, and SEO rankings of your website. 

If you’re ready to take the plunge and start creating more evergreen content to improve your business, then set yourself ongoing goals and targets to ensure this transition is sustainable and as effective as possible.

Now, SEO is a necessity. It’s a key skill that many in the office have acquired.

It’s one of the most pivotal skills in digital marketing and is required in multiple areas of an agency - especially PR.

PR and SEO go hand-in-hand. The two disciplines are more similar than you might think, and share far more than just being marketing acronyms. PR and SEO blend skill sets, have common goals, and operate in similar ways.

By utilising the power and practices of SEO, you can simultaneously achieve your PR goals, and create some of the same end results as an effective PR strategy in terms of promoting content and building your brand’s credibility.

How content connects SEO and PR

Two of the core goals for both SEO and PR are visibility. SEO is about boosting your brand higher on those Google rankings, getting your content (and your business) seen by more of the right people. PR is about visibility, too - it’s about getting your brand out there, building relationships, and cultivating a positive image. Both SEO and PR aim to grow audiences, expand reach, and enhance brand awareness. Not only that, but they actually utilise the same practices to achieve those goals.

Content is one key area where SEO and PR overlap. Once upon a time, there were sneaky ways of worming your way up the Google rankings by working to trick the algorithm, or by simply keyword stuffing. Now, not so much: Google rewards good content. Keywords are important, but won’t be effective if you’re not simultaneously crafting relevant, resonating content itself. Quality content is a must for PR, too: what’s the point in utilising content to boost your brand if that content is poorly written, not compelling, and paints your business in an unattractive light?

An excellent content strategy typically uses some kind of content calendar. Collaboration between PR and SEO here benefits both parties. While a content calendar allows PR professionals to accurately schedule not only digital content but business events, this can also be used by your SEO content team to create relevant web or blog content to attract clicks from an appropriate audience. Similarly, when a PR project necessitates web traffic, SEO experts are the ones to talk to about driving organic clicks.

Build business connections with PR to improve your Google ranking

Content is where PR and SEO first overlap, but it’s not the only important aspect of either practice. Quality content is one thing, but SEO also relies on good outreach, and that’s something PR professionals know a lot about.

A big part of PR is about building relationships and connections, and those connections can be extremely useful for SEO. Let us explain why. SEO thrives on backlinks. Links are also one of the most important factors for Google rankings, but for many businesses, particularly start-ups, it can be really difficult to get other businesses to link to yours. Domain authority also comes into play here: while this isn’t a factor in terms of Google rankings, having backlinks from websites with better domain authority will help to boost the performance of your website in comparison to competitors.

The connections created by PR - be they relevant creators, bloggers, other businesses or even customers - can be vital for garnering backlinks to your website, particularly if they are coming from websites that have a similar audience to yours which your own content is relevant to. By having a solid PR strategy, you can automatically increase your Google rankings, as well as your domain authority, by utilising those same connections.

Building a reputable brand with social proof

Social proof, as coined by Robert Cialdini in 1984, refers in a digital marketing context to the idea that before committing to a purchase or service, potential clients look for reviews, recommendations or anything that proves a company is reputable. So how does this come into SEO?

Social proof can itself improve SEO by directing fresh content and new backlinks towards your site. Excellent PR is a good way to guarantee excellent examples of social proof, like reviews, recommendations, or general positive buzz about your company. Having strong, recognisable branding is a solid way to grow your company into one that is reputable, and trusted by customers - and can make PR an easier job in itself. This can help you to grow your audience while harnessing social proof. But this works backwards, too.

By growing backlinks and the hosts of that content, you can also utilise the power of social proof. By improving your Google ranking, you can boost your brand’s credibility, and likely increase the initial trust of potential clients. Having a higher ranking site and strong SEO skills could be a form of social proof itself - and increased audience trust is never a bad thing in terms of PR.

SEO not only works with PR, but can replicate its results

While SEO and PR blend a lot of similar skills and practices, SEO itself can ultimately act as PR in disguise.

In fact, in some ways, SEO is PR adapted for the modern, increasingly digital age: SEO aims to grow your business/audience, amplify your brand awareness and visibility, and can even improve your credibility and grow client trust.

After all, brand awareness and reach are nothing without trust and reputability, and the same practices that’ll improve your Google rankings will also help to make your site and content more trustworthy to its actual readers. Furthermore, SEO best practices use the same principles adhered to by PR professionals within content management. Both PR and SEO share practices which make content more effective, more trustworthy, and more likely to trigger action from potential clients.

By efficiently and accurately using SEO in your digital marketing strategy, you can not only improve your Google rankings, but simultaneously create results similar to an effective PR campaign.

Content is the foundation of practically every digital activity. High quality, relevant content is a non-negotiable in today’s online world. It’s not only there to engage and educate but can also have a huge impact on your organic visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

But creating content without much thought won’t get you far. The missing piece of the puzzle? Context. Context is what gives your content purpose to the reader.

What do we mean by content?

Content is the material that you share with your audience. It can come in a range of formats, including blog posts, videos, case studies, product descriptions, infographics, audio and photos.

What do we mean by context?

Context is the positioning or storyline of the content. With this in mind, context is what provides value to the reader.

Why is context so important to content?

Quite simply, you can’t have good quality content without context.

Why do you spend time creating and distributing your content? More than likely, it’s in the hope of your audience viewing it and, in the best-case scenario, engaging with your call-to-action.

However, in order to measure the value your content is driving, you need to understand why you’re creating that content in the first place. That’s where context comes in. Context helps you understand the intent behind the content. Before creating content, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the purpose of the content?
• What outcome are you wanting to get out of the content?
• How can you create the content to ensure this outcome happens?

These questions will help you create content with context.

3 tips to create content with context

Context can make a big difference to the success of your content marketing. But it’s important to approach it in the right way…

• Know your audience: The only way of creating content with context is to know your audience. Who are they? What do they need? What are their pain points? Answering questions like these will help you create content that provides a solution to their needs. It’s also important to give some thought to the buying journey your audience is likely to go through, as this will help you craft content for different stages of the funnel. If you’re yet to create buyer personas, this is a good opportunity to do just that.

• Support first, sell second: When writing your content, write to support your readers. Content is there to educate and give value. It should be based on providing a solution to the pain points your customers are experiencing. For example, if you have a complex service offering that your audience is struggling to understand, why not create informational blogs, case studies or videos to clearly demonstrate the value you can provide? Or maybe you want to give your brand awareness a boost. In this case, content that showcases your culture and the history of the brand could work wonders.

• Make it personal: Did you know, 72 percent of customers say they only engage with marketing messages that are personalised? With online competition at an all-time high, it pays to make your content personal. Context helps you do just this. Using automation software and your customer data, you can establish triggers that will provide the right information to the right user at the right time. These dynamic features and personalisation tactics help to make your content even more relevant to the reader. Target groups can be defined by location, device, user behaviour and purchase history. Tailored content created with context and customised landing pages can then be implemented based on these customer insights.

To conclude…

We all know how important content is to your brand. But creating content with context levels up your efforts. Our approach fuses brand with content, creating relevant assets that are sure to keep your audience engaged.

Like any content on any platform, both digitally and otherwise, the best-received examples know exactly who they’re speaking to. This comes down to defining your audience, and in rough terms, that’s what a user persona is. But it is more too. Well defined user personas consider all those drivers, emotional and otherwise, that will get your audience to engage with you and compel them to act.

Why do you need to know who you’re talking to?

Fact. Your website isn’t there to look nice. It is an integral part of your marketing strategy. It’s an engagement platform, or a sales platform, or both. We know that we need to tailor messages to appeal to an audience. That’s stating the obvious, but there are real benefits that tie directly into your marketing KPIs for doing this.

They include but are not limited to:

• Building meaningful relationships with your audience, because you’re saying the right things to the right people, at the right time.
• Getting to know your customers better, including their likes, dislikes and challenges.
• Increasing sales through targeted messages at optimum times.

What are user personas?

User personas as a tool to enable you to do all these things and maximise the effectiveness of your website content. For anyone who’s worked in media, you’ll have come across those funny personas they create for things like radio stations, where their target market is a 40-year old mum of two called Dawn or something like that.

The point is, it’s not a new concept. It’s a way of picturing your target audience that’s been used for some time, but it’s revamped and refreshed for the digital age, with a whole host of data-driven tools to help you dig even deeper.

Rather than having one persona for your brand, you’ll likely find that your audience naturally falls into several categories, giving you a handful of user personas. The personas themselves are fictional characters based on similar interests, traits, pain points and so on, to give you a visualised character to help you better pitch your brand.

Different types of user personas

If you’re wondering if there are different types of audience personas or different templates to work from, there are.

You can work from certain criteria to build your personas, which may be something like:

• Goal-based personas – this specifically looks at the user’s workflow to achieve certain tasks or goals on your website.
• Engaging personas – these are a lot more in-depth and nuanced, taking emotions, drivers, behaviour and backgrounds into account to flesh out a full personality for designers to work from.
• Fictional personas – unlike engaging personas, these tend to be personas based on intuition rather than robust data.

How many user personas should we have?

Sorry folks, the answer to this question is an unsatisfying, “it depends”. But it depends on what, you ask. Partly on the amount of data you have. Typically, the more information you have on your users, the more in-depth you can go. But it can also vary depending on things like how diverse the people are within your research.

The most important thing to remember is that you’re not working to a magic number of user personas. Instead, you want to define the most accurate personas possible with the data you have.

Ways to define user personas

Defining personas often comes down to a multi-step method. The more precise the persona, and the more data-driven it is, the more steps in the strategy. If you are going by feeling more than data, obviously the process will be stripped back.

In broad strokes, you’d expect any work on building user personas to include things like:

• Data collection.
• Reviewing the data to form conclusions.
• Categorising the main traits to see how many personas you may be speaking to.
• Defining and naming your personas.

Like anything, the data collection part can work in numerous ways too depending on the techniques used. It might be qualitative, quantitative, or observational research for instance.

How W/Brand implement user personas

For us, it’s all about knowing who you’re talking to so you can build a customer journey that works online. We do this by defining all the user personas and following a template that’s proven to be effective.

We also consider customers, employees and relevant stakeholders in the mix. Once defined, we map out their journey from the first possible touchpoint to the end conversion. This relies on us having a clear and accurate goal for each persona from the beginning. As we progress through your design, we use these personas to stay both focused and creative. Ultimately, this empowers us to develop content that’s engaging and relevant to your brand, and your brand alone.

In conclusion

Use personas may get touted as a relatively new thing, but sales and marketing teams have seen the benefits in visualising a target audience in quite a specific way useful for many years. We don’t need to tell you that the real difference here is the data and the methods we now have at our fingertips.

Content needs to be targeted and relevant to engage an audience. Especially online, where you can drive down your bounce rate and other vital metrics by simply tweaking the content on the page. User personas are the thing that gives you direction.

They keep your website project on track from beginning to end, and they give you benchmarks for measuring the success of your content throughout your website’s lifespan. But like anything in your marketing strategy, they should never be allowed to grow stale either. Things change. People change. Personas change. And with best practices and handle on your dynamically changing business and audience, you can crest the waves.

Then there's picking out a name that represents the business. Plus creating brand design guidelines and choosing logos, colours, and fonts; researching your target audience and working out how to reach and communicate with them. 

Another key element to building a brand is establishing a brand personality that will shape your tone of voice, the content you create, and the marketing materials that you use.

There’s no denying that all of these steps are vital to building your brand, and they’re necessary assets for your overall marketing strategy. But a solid brand focuses on more than just the aesthetic or personal attributes of your business. 

By digging a little deeper and establishing core, unchanging brand values, you can grow your business, build client trust, and improve your overarching brand strategy. 

What are brand values?

Brand values are the core principles behind your business. They are the unwavering beliefs that build the foundation of your brand.  As such, they will be the basis for the decisions that you make internally, as well the way that the brand is represented externally. Your brand values are the ethos behind your company, and will likely have a huge influence on other aspects of your brand, like it’s personality, processes, and overall mission. 

Like all things, brand values can change, developing slightly over time as your business grows and progresses, particularly if you eventually elect to rebrand. But even if your company goes from a tiny start-up to a global business, the values you adopt in its earliest stages will likely still be at least some of the core beliefs you work by. 

It’s important to choose values that for the most part remain timeless, relevant and can withstand fundamental changes to your business or sector. Some of your initial brand values, for example, could actually influence the shape of a future rebrand. While you shouldn’t be afraid to alter or even create new brand values later, your initial brand values shouldn’t be seen as placeholders - you should establish beliefs that you truly care about. 

Why do brand values matter?

Brand values are important because they add a layer of depth to your business. Not only that, but they can be fundamental in the overall growth of your brand.

Having a set of brand values you abide by can help to make informed business decisions that can drive the progress of your brand. This could include the partnerships you make, the people that you employ, and even the clients that you take on.

Brand values hold you accountable, both to your employees and their level of satisfaction and morale, but also to your clients. A brand value is essentially a promise to operate in a certain way, to a specific standard. When you uphold that promise, you boost the level of trust between both clients and staff members.

They help you to make choices that’ll benefit the business as a whole and everybody.

For example, if your brand values include a promise to be an eco-friendly company, your clients trust you to uphold that by making environmentally conscious decisions. 

If you then entered a partnership with a company who were notorious for having poor sustainability practices, that could damage your reputation with clients who built a relationship with you based on that particular brand value.

How do you establish your own set of brand values?

If you want to ensure your brand values stand the test of time and company progression, it’s important to make sure that you’re choosing brand values that actually represent your company. Certain words or phrases may sound great on paper - but are you going to commit to them long term?

There are a number of factors you can consider when establishing your own brand values.

Personal values

As a CEO or founder, one good way to start is by incorporating some of your own unshakeable values that you want to incorporate into your brand’s mission. 

Personal values can be beneficial for making business decisions like partnerships  (do the company/people you are partnering with share your core beliefs?) or even hiring decisions (does this candidate match your values and will they use those values to drive their role in the company?). 

Make sure these values are clear-cut, not generic or fluffy. Before adding something as a value, consider what it actually means.

Is it succinct and clear? Is it easy to remember? Is it genuinely what you believe, and will you commit to it as your brand grows? 

Audience values

Who are your target audience? What are their values? How do they align with your own?

Why does this matter? Because clients simply expect more from the brands that they work with. What’s more, the competition for businesses in pretty much every sector have multiplied in recent years; if a client’s values don’t align with yours, they don’t have to work with you. 

People these days are more likely to pick brands whose values align with their own. By understanding the brand values that matter to your target audience, you can connect with them on a deeper level, increasing engagement and most importantly, building brand loyalty.

That said, remember our previous point; your brand values are supposed to be something that you believe in, and commit to. If you adopt certain values just to gain custom and then make business decisions that go against them, you are very likely to damage that trust and lose business. Researching your target audience is a helpful way to establish values that resonate with both parties, but it shouldn’t be deceitful.

Competitor values

No matter what industry you’re operating in, you’re more than likely facing a lot of competition. The market for pretty much everything is oversaturated. How do you stand out?

We mentioned that audience beliefs are a good starting point for brand values, and they are. So, because your brand values can set you apart in the eyes of a consumer, you should look at the values of your competitors, too. 

Not to emulate them, but to think about what sets you apart. Instead of picking a generic set of values that don’t mean much, think of the values your brand holds that not only differentiate it within your sector, but that make it a cut above the rest.

What is missing in your sector? How are you solving your clients’ pain points? 

Excellent relationship building and communication? A higher standard of work? Innovation and the desire to bring new solutions on the table?

These can all be incorporated into your brand values.

By establishing brand values, you can add depth to your brand, make decisions that make sense and most importantly, build the client trust and brand loyalty that will keep your business growing. 

Digital marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing, especially when combined with traditional techniques. As a society, our lives are becoming more and more online. More of your potential clients than ever before are using smartphones, the internet, social media, which means they may be more reachable on these mediums than they would be through other types of advertisement.

But digital marketing can be a bit of a minefield, and that’s where agencies come in. Agencies hold unique experience and valuable expertise in all aspects of digital marketing. And when it comes to establishing your brand online, it’s important to do it right. Working with an agency can establish your unique branding, grow your business digitally, and may well result in a much higher overall ROI.

Creating a brand identity

Your brand identity is the core of your business, so it should be at the core of your marketing, too. Establishing your brand identity means getting to the heart of your message, ethos, and mission. It’ll also help you to target your audience, learn what makes you stand out from your competitors, and create clear brand guidelines. Ensuring your brand guidelines and that brand identity is cohesive across all online and offline marketing materials helps your brand to become more memorable, recognisable, and potentially more credible.

Branding is your USP, and it’s pivotal for your business. Yet, many companies don’t have a clear definition of their branding. Agencies can work with you not only to shape this but to ensure it translates into all of your marketing materials.

Content and design

Having a brand identity is a great start. But it’s carefully crafted copywriting and flawless graphic design that makes those marketing materials shine, whether that’s a website, an app, your social media profiles, brochures, videos… or just about anything else that you can think of.

So why choose an agency? Well, the digital world has never been more competitive. Even for B2B companies, standing out amongst the white noise of professionals, people and businesses creating 24/7 streams of advertisement can be difficult. Agencies are experienced, both in what works in terms of marketing, but also in different sectors and the niches which work well for them. In addition, agencies can provide a team of flexible people who can work with various projects, writing and designing the best content for your audience and industry and allowing you to cut through the wall of excess internet.

When one agency is looking after all of your marketing channels, they can ensure consistent branding is relayed. Graphic designers can create professional-looking imagery or video utilising that branding to build credibility. Copywriters will be knowledgeable in SEO and use it to grow traffic to your site. They’ll also have access to premium tools to do thorough, relevant keyword research for your brand.

H2 - Analytics

Agencies should help businesses grow. Their marketing strategies should align with your goals and KPIs. A good agency will deliver those results to you and use analytics to prove that those KPIs are being met. Essentially, they will prove their worth to you - and if their plan isn’t working, they’ll work to devise a new one.

Agencies should offer you bespoke reporting to prove ROI. Without the relevant experience, it can be hard to read what actually works and what doesn’t; enlisting help from the experts is a sure-fire way to ace your marketing strategy. That goes for everything: whether your website is working as it should, the success of digital campaigns, PPC and ads. Speaking of PPC - Pay Per Click - working with an agency is a great way to ensure you’re getting the most for your money. Experienced copywriters and PPC specialists can create paid ads that result in more conversions and, ultimately, more revenue.

Working with an agency is the way to cut out trial-and-error, get more for your money, and help your business stand out in a digital world that has never been more competitive… or more rapidly changing. What’s more, for companies in their earlier stages or start-ups, an agency can help get to the very core of what your business is about.

If your business requires a post-lockdown boost, a marketing agency may be the solution you need. And for those in the software and tech industries, look no further than WithBrand. We specialise in innovative B2B marketing for these sectors, and we’d love to help you build your brand further. If this sounds like you, get in touch, we’d love to meet you.

The sales funnel itself is entirely different. For B2B customers, it’s a longer process, with a very different potential customer life cycle. Conversions can be more difficult to achieve but tend to hold a higher value. In B2B sectors, your client is likely already aware of what they want or need from a company. Your digital marketing strategy is often more about proving why you’re the right people for the job. You’ve got to establish your credibility and stand out in a potentially competitive industry.

When it comes to content marketing, a different approach is necessary. You need to think about long-form content. In particular, you need to think about creating a whitepaper. 

Why create a whitepaper?

Becoming a thought leader is an important way to excel in your industry, proving competence, credibility and becoming a more reputable and recognised brand. Additionally, it gives you the opportunity to open up meaningful conversations and grow progress within your sector. 

Demonstrating thought leadership not only establishes your credibility, but it can be a fantastic way to generate meaningful new leads, which can result in successful conversions. While it is not and never should be a marketing brochure, a carefully crafted and well-designed whitepaper can simultaneously promote your branding in an effective way that doesn’t rely on a sales pitch.

How to create a whitepaper

A captivating whitepaper will rely on two main components, the copywriting and the design. The content might be more obvious; this kind of long form copy needs to be purposeful, compelling, and worth reading, without fluff or waffle. But big, uninviting blocks of text rarely capture their readers. A good whitepaper will balance thorough copy and important data with an appropriate layout and eye-catching graphic tools.

Copywriting

We’ll start with the written side of things. Writing a whitepaper can seem like a daunting task, especially if you’re not familiar with long form content. This means that writing one with no real purpose is going to be a lot of stress with little payoff.

Don’t write a whitepaper for the sake of writing a whitepaper. A whitepaper should look to offer a solution to a common problem in your sector, or tackle a particular industry pain point. It should offer a new, refreshing angle, and more importantly, be backed up by reliable data and evidence. It should be research-led, with citations throughout from trustworthy sources, and it should fill in the gaps of existing content within your sector.

In turn, this means your copy needs to be thorough and in-depth while remaining free from fluff or waffle. You should be answering questions and opening a discussion. The title is important here; you should aim to draw in readers and encourage downloads and sign-ups with something topical, relevant, and interest-inspiring. 

Which leads us to the tone of voice. You’re presenting yourself as a thought leader, so you must write with authority and expertise. But it should also be provocative, written in a way that feels worth following. Writing conversationally is also a great way to keep your readers engaged. You should seek to captivate your audience, encouraging them not only to read on and discover your conclusion but to take action afterwards. 

Your whitepaper should, therefore, reach a distinctive conclusion that offers a relevant, practical solution to that pain point. By asserting yourself correctly, they may even look to you for that solution. This is an opportunity to close new business.

Tips on writing long form content

The point of a whitepaper is to explore, in-depth, an industry problem or question and build a viable solution or answer, one too large to explore in an ordinary blog, article, or case study. This means it’s a fairly hefty piece of copy. If it’s your first time writing long form content, it’s important to get to grips with how to do this effectively. 

The first step is planning. A whitepaper should be research-led. You are bound to have a lot of data or findings to share, and it’s important that your exploration of this data is well-organised and makes sense to the reader. Even if you’re not the type to typically plan out your copywriting projects, doing so will really benefit you when you’re attempting long form content. 

Separate the different points of your argument into sections that make logical sense, allowing you to re-reference different segments or data seamlessly throughout the paper. Make use of paragraphs; big blocks of text can be difficult to follow, and they also allow you to keep your writing concise before you begin to move your argument onto a different section.

Your whitepaper should flow well, and the way you present the structure of your argument should make sense to the reader. Much like a story, it should have a beginning (an engaging introduction), a middle (an analysis of the data and the main element of your argument), and an ending that pulls the two together with a decisive conclusion and a call-to-action. Never cut corners when it comes to editing. Proofread yourself, and ask colleagues to do so too, to get different perspectives on not only the copy itself, but the flow, structure, and readability of your whitepaper.

Graphic design

Keeping readers engaged is important, and it’s never been more difficult. On a universal level, there have never been so many distractions ready to interrupt your readers, so you need to keep them focused with content that is easy to read, and data that is easy to digest. This is where design comes in. 

Design is vital for readability. From choosing an appropriate font and size, to ensuring your paragraphs and headings are placed in complementary positions, graphic design will transform your whitepaper from an essay into an engaging piece of content. 

It’s also a useful way to translate complex data and statistics into easily digestible, user-friendly information in the form of graphs or infographics, to capture your reader’s attention and support your copy. Think carefully about the design and layout of your whitepaper, and how you can flag key details or sections to your audience - especially skim readers, who are inevitably bound to make up a proportion of that, irrespective of the content itself.

Branding

To reiterate an earlier point, whitepapers are not marketing brochures. And they shouldn’t be approached as such. You will absolutely compromise your credibility by turning an exercise in thought leadership into a sales pitch, and your potential clients aren’t reading whitepapers in order to be overtly sold or marketed to. 

But a successful, carefully crafted whitepaper can accomplish its purpose whilst simultaneously promoting your services and your expertise. One of the best ways to do this is through your branding. Branding is extremely important for your business and should be reflected through all of your materials, including whitepapers. Designers can utilise your branding within the look of the whitepaper itself, in the font, colour scheme, even in the style in which data is relayed via graphs, infographics and more. 

Distinctive branding makes your business stand out, and it makes you memorable. At the end of your whitepaper, you’ll need a call-to-action, but you’ll also need to encourage contact from prospective leads. Some of these will be immediate, with potential clients making an instant note of your contact numbers, email addresses, or social profiles. Others won’t be, but they may well keep you in mind - and your branding will help them to recognise and remember you later... when they’re just at the right stage of the sales funnel. 

It was reported that Brits will spend the equivalent of 22 years, one month and four days of our life online.  

That’s an awful lot of time and an awful lot of content consumed. With more and more brands making their way online, it’s only becoming harder to stand out in the saturated digital landscape. 

This is where design branded infographics can help. Read on to find out what they are, how they can help you cut through the noise and top tips to get designing your own. 

What is a design branded infographic?

The official definition for an infographic is: 

“A visual representation of information or data, e.g. as a chart or diagram.”

But an infographic offers so much more than this. These engaging assets are a collection of minimal yet impactful words, imagery, graphics and charts that break down topics into easy-to-digest information. 

Why should you use design branded infographics?

In this day and age, people are overloaded with information. This makes it harder to get your message heard and means that basic text and image often isn’t enough to get your readers engaging. 

Over the years, infographics have cemented their place on the marketing scene as a way of presenting information in a concise, creative and captivating way. 

So, what are the benefits of introducing them into your marketing efforts? 

• More engaging and shareable: Grabbing your reader’s attention is often the hardest part. The visual nature of infographics makes them captivating and encourages readers to share them far and wide. 
• Easier to skim: Infographics are great at breaking down complex topics into easy-to-digest content. This makes them faster to consume, making it more likely for people to read and take action. 
• Repurpose existing content: You can also use infographics to get more mileage out of the existing content you’ve already put time into creating. Why not summarise that long blog post into a shareable infographic and share on your social channels? 
• Stand out in the market: Getting your message heard is important. Infographics can help you position your business as a thought leader in your market by conveying your brand’s message in a way that stands out. 
• Urge your reader to take action: It was found that when call-to-actions are accompanied by visuals, readers are 323 percent more likely to complete the desired action. That’s a whole lot of potential readers to convert!

Another great thing about infographics is that they can be slotted into various elements of your marketing. Whether it’s your social media channels, across your website or as an asset to bring your email content to life. 

7 tips for designing branded infographics 

While infographics are a brilliant asset for your marketing, they can take time to create and they need to be designed well to perform. Following these foundations, you’ll be well on your way to creating a branded infographic that’s right for your business. 

Keep your business goals in mind

Make sure you keep your business goals front and centre. Consider what you’re trying to achieve with this piece of content. Does it fit into your short and long term marketing goals? How does it support what you want to achieve? 

While infographics can be hugely valuable to a business, they can also be a waste of time if it’s not tied into your wider strategy. 

Captivating messaging

Infographics typically have limited text as the aim is to make them easy to skim and digest. Consider the messaging you want to communicate and ensure it’s conveyed in a succinct way that reflects your tone of voice. Condense and cut out as much as you can. This will allow for more room for creative designs and helps you keep your story on track. 

Keep it clean 

Aim to keep the design clear and clean. That means choosing appropriate fonts that are readable and a colour palette that doesn’t impede the design. Stick to your brand’s colours and opt for combinations that support rather than weaken the visual impact. 

Strong visuals

An infographic is a visual asset which means it needs to be visually strong. If you’re using imagery, make sure it’s high-quality and on brand. Icons also fall into this remit. It’s important to be consistent so that people can recognise your brand from your infographic. Choose one style that suits your brand and be sure to stick with it. 

Graphs and charts

Data backs up your claims with something more concrete. Where possible, use stats and figures to support your infographic text and make them more engaging by placing them in graphs and charts. 

Less is more

Infographics are intended to revolve around a single, focused point. Don’t make your infographic a long stream of facts and figures or use it as an opportunity to include tons of wordy copy. 

It’s important to make it streamlined and focused on a single topic so that readers understand the topic at hand as soon as they start reading. 

Logo placement

To capture the attention of your audience we recommend positioning your content first. Research shows that infographics are 30 times more likely to be read in their entirety than blog posts or news articles. 

As such, logos, links and further information can be placed at the bottom of the infographic. If your infographic has been designed well, your readers will scroll to the end if they want further information. 

Over to you

Hopefully, this insight will help you consider why and how design branded infographics can help your marketing. In the digital world, things change fast which is why it’s so important to keep up to the minute on best practices. Test and learn as you go to figure out what’s right for you. Look for opportunities to keep refining your process and improving your output. 

Fusing brand, content and data together, we can help you develop your brand strategy and style to deploy across your content and marketing materials. Although we’re creatively focused, we’re also results driven which is exactly how your infographics should be too. 

And, let’s face it. Sometimes, you put the work in, you create your brand, and a few years down the line, something just doesn’t feel right anymore.

Maybe the colours are wrong. Maybe your values aren’t at the forefront of your branding. Maybe your USP is getting lost among your messaging.

If your brand isn’t expressing the values you want and your customers aren’t getting the experience you imagined, then a rebrand might be the way forward.

And if you’re wondering how to rebrand your company, then these simple yet effective tips will help you create the brand you have always wanted.

Does your company need a rebrand?

Let’s first look at what a “good” brand is. A good brand will not only communicate what your brand does in a way that appeals to who your brand is for, but it will be a direct reflection of your brand proposition. 

If your brand has been falling short of these points, then you should consider a rebrand. 

Rebranding can help your business grow.

How?

By highlighting all the things that make your business stand out to better differentiate yourself against your competitors. 

Understanding your brand proposition will help you carve a place for your rebrand in the marketplace.

Knowing your values, what your purpose is, who your customers are, what experience they will have with you, and how you can add value to them. These are all elements of your proposition that need addressing in order to launch a successful rebrand of your company. 

Why are you considering a rebrand?

Before you even think about how to rebrand your company, you need to consider the reasons why.

Because a company rebrand can carry significant risks with it, it has the power to potentially confuse and even put off customers (and existing customers), so getting it right is vital.

So, why are you considering a rebrand? Are your sales slowing down? Are your ideal clients not aware of your brand, despite your herculean efforts? Although a new market strategy might solve these issues, there are some additional reasons why you might consider a rebrand.

• Have your business decisions or your brand mission changed? Does this need to be reflected in your branding?
• Have you merged with or been bought by a new brand? 
• Has your company expanded? Has it become an international brand? Does your branding need to change in order to speak to your new international audience?
• Has your audience or your customer changed since you first launched? Does your branding need to align with them?
• Do you need to differentiate yourself from your competition?
• Is your branding too weak and generic, making it forgettable?
• Has your business evolved so much that it needs to target a new market?
• Does your company need to overhaul a bad reputation that doesn’t reflect your proposition or values?

If one or more of these points resonates, then follow these tips for a successful rebranding mission.

#1 Know your audience

If your audience has changed, evolved, or is completely different from what you thought when you originally started your business, then the first step is simple. Get to know your audience thoroughly before you relaunch your branding.

Think market research, focus groups, forums, social media polls, and surveys. Analyze your data and discover who your real audience is. Your rebrand needs to connect with your new audience in a powerful way. To make your company successful and put you ahead of your competition. 

#2 Consider your brand values

When it comes to rebranding your company it is vital that you hold on to your brand values, as they are key to your messaging. But if your values, mission, and vision have changed then so must your branding. 

What is your mission statement? Even if your end goal is the same, if the journey has to change, then so must your mission. Your mission and your vision will define your rebranding. In everything from who you employ to what colours and designs, you use on your website.

#3 Change your tone

Your company’s TOV or tone of voice is how you communicate to your ideal audience. It’s in all your messaging, from emails and web copy to ads, social media posts and content marketing. 

When you change and reevaluate your mission and brand values, your brand voice also needs to evolve. To create consistency, trust and engagement (and conversions!) It’s not just about what you say. It’s how you say it.

#4 What’s in a logo?

A rebrand is about the outside as much as the inside. Once your mission and values are established, you need to think about your design assets. 

This is everything from your logo to your colours, to your typography. 

If these all need to change to fit your rebrand, then consider each one very carefully. Your logo should be simple, make an impact, be versatile and have longevity. Your logo is one of your most used and recognised assets. Try not to lose brand recognition and hold onto the parts that worked.

#5 Choose your colours

Similarly, colours play a big part in branding and brand recognition. They have the power to make a brand instantly recognisable. If your branding needs to show its true colours - whether that is because they aren’t memorable, they don’t stand out, or they don’t reflect your values - do your homework and your research. Colour psychology plays a big part in choosing the right colours for your rebrand.

#6 Figure out your fonts

Fonts and typography are other design assets to consider when rebranding. Have a look at what worked and what didn’t work with your existing fonts. Maybe they were too serious, too comical, too standard, or too childish. 

Again, think about your audience. Would an older and more professional audience relate to a cartoonish font? Would it speak to them or show them that you aren’t the right company for them? Or would a younger, progressive audience enjoy a standard or generic font? Or would something more stand-out and diverse appeal to them?

In conclusion...

Remember. Your company’s branding is more than just a name, a logo, and your tone of voice. While these are your company’s ambassadors, your brand is much more. 

Your brand values and proposition should always be at the heart of everything you create. And when you are planning a rebrand, this is never more important. However you decide to rebrand, always go back to your values, your mission and your audience. Do this, and your rebrand can only succeed.

You click. And immediately click off again because that webpage is not what it promised to be. Or there wasn’t enough on that page to hold your interest.

This is something known as a bounce rate.

And for a B2B website, a high bounce rate is something you need to be cautious of. In this article, we’ll tell what a bounce rate is, why it’s important and how to lower it. 

What is a bounce rate?

A bounce is a single-page session. 

If someone spots the link on a call to action, or your site comes up in their Google search, hopefully, they will click on it. Once they click, they’ll be taken to your b2b landing page, blog post, or wherever you intended them to go. If the page fails to answer their query, is too slow, or is hard to navigate, they’ll click (bounce) off.

What causes a bounce?

There are several reasons:

• Leaving a page without clicking any CTAs
• Entering a new URL 
• Disingenuous meta
• Clicking on an external link and leaving the site
• Bad user experience
• Low-quality content
• Clicking back to the search results (as the page didn’t solve the problem)
• Slow loading
• Technical errors

Studies show that a “good” bounce rate for a B2B website is around 40%-60%. With a VERY good rate being 20%-30%.

How to make sure your B2B website has a low bounce rate

Part of your B2B marketing plan has to include making your website as optimised as possible. To prevent ideal clients from bouncing off and telling Google, “these guys aren’t doing a good enough job to keep me around.”

If your website has a high bounce rate, then here are some things you can do to lower it. 

#1 Optimised content

Your content is one of your most significant tools for engagement, earning trust, and getting conversions. But if your content isn’t optimised, and if it doesn’t provide value, it could all be a waste of your time.

Ensure your content is consistent and high-quality. And make sure it’s scannable and optimised for search engines AND people. People skim read, and if your content isn’t punchy, concise, and easy to scan - off they bounce.

#2. Optimised for mobile

The majority of consumers, including your B2B website users, consume their information on mobiles.

If your B2B landing pages aren’t optimised for mobile, then a prospect could immediately make the decision to click off. Making your bounce rate higher. Ensure your whole site is mobile-friendly and test it.

#3 Optimised for relevance

Always ensure the content you create is relevant to the searcher’s intent. If you’re targeting keywords for the sake of it and don’t have the content to support it, prospects won’t bother to hang around. And it could damage your reputation.

Make sure your content matches the messaging a prospect has seen in the SERPS.

#4 Easy to navigate

Your website must give a good user experience. One of the easiest ways for this to happen is to have easy navigation. If your site is challenging or confusing to navigate, or if users have to do too much to get the information they need, they’ll leave.

Make your navigation as effortless, clear, and straightforward as possible.

#5 Speed things up

Sometimes the problem with bounce rates isn’t because of your content. But your website’s loading speed. 

You could have the best content, but if your website takes its time to load, you’ll never keep prospects where you want them. People want results, and they want them NOW! Your website should load in under 2 seconds. If your site is taking things slow, it’s time for an audit.

In conclusion...

Lowering your bounce rate is vital for a thriving B2B website. Make sure you go through all of the steps above to ensure you have the lowest bounce rate possible. The more you can lower it, the more you will improve your rankings.

Whether you’re going through a structural change, a company revamp or have noticed a decrease in certain business activities; there are plenty of ways to create and run a super-efficient brand workshop. Read on to find out how.

Let’s look at why you would want to set up a brand workshop

There are a whole host of reasons why you might want to take a step back from your day to day business activities and really put pen to paper. Here are some of the top reasons why you might want to put together a brand workshop and focus on what’s best for your brand:

• You’ve noticed an influx of new competitors have entered your market, or your customer base has gone through a significant change.
• As part of a brand redesign, you’re in the process of or have already developed new products or services.
• Your business is about to enter a brand new market.
• You’re trying to find ways to put a stamp on your brand difference.
• You’re looking to ramp up company growth.
• As part of a strategy to attract the best talent, you’re seeking a competitive edge

This is just a snapshot of reasons why creating and running a brand workshop could be the next logical step for your business. We’ve covered the why’s, now let’s explore the most effective ways to set up your workshop. Starting with...

Appointing a brand workshop leader

Making sure you have the right person to run your brand workshop - also known as a facilitator - can make all the difference when it comes to its success. A leader should be someone inspiring, someone who others will listen to and who people can trust in the decision-making process.

Creating a positive space

One of the benefits of a brand workshop is that it isn’t a meeting. It’s a space to bring people together, discuss ideas and share opinions in order to achieve an overall goal. This means you can set it up as you wish. By creating an environment full of positivity, you can ensure to get the most out of your team. Think comfortable seating, a friendly demeanour and lots of opportunities for collaboration.

Working out group size

One of the things you’ll want to consider with your brand workshop is the size of the group. Ideally, you want 5-8 participants - just enough to capture a variety of views but not too many that the group feels overwhelmed. You can also further split the group into two smaller teams to look at the issue in different ways. This can be applied to a variety of topics, from brand personality to brand values and options for your company logo.

And in these times, you might want to consider running a remote brand workshop.

Making sure people feel included

It’s important not to leave anyone out of the discussions and knowledge sharing sessions, so make sure everyone is able to have their say. When people feel included, they are more likely to want to share ideas and opinions, and positive reinforcement can help the good ideas keep flowing.

Keeping the team focused

It’s normal for workshops of any nature to sometimes deviate from the subject matter, but it’s crucial to keep your team on track to get the most out of the workshop. If a member of your team seems distracted, try to re-engage them by actively involving them in the discussion - ask for their opinion or thoughts, and it can help them to pay closer attention.

Getting practical

Pretty much the entire point of creating and running a brand workshop is to get down to work. While discussion is a key part, it’s also good to get people actively working on the issue quickly and throughout the workshop. Try to keep discussion limited and make sure your key issues are being tested and tried as much as possible.

Setting clear deadlines for activities

To really keep things moving, make sure the group is aware of how much time they have to spend on each exercise and remember that content is key. Keep things simple, keep an eye on any progress and then make it clear when time is up.

Now that you have a clear idea of what you want your brand workshop to look like, it’s time to consider the schedule of activities. A great way to kick things off is to introduce some warm-up exercise, such as...

Exercise 1 - Warm up and defining personality

If you’ve ever heard of the game, “if we were a”, then you’re already setting off on the right foot. In order to get your most forward-thinking minds to question your brand personality, this game is all about equating your brand with other objects and people. Try the following questions to really get the creative juices flowing:

• If your brand was an animal, would it be a lion, an eagle or a dog?
• If it were a fruit or vegetable, what would it be, what would it taste like?
• If the business were a colour, what colour would it be?

This game, as well as providing a great platform to warm up, is also a quick way to assess your brand’s positioning. It helps you to see things from a different angle as a way to refocus on your brand.

There have been a number of studies on associating human qualities to brands, with many showing how it can offer businesses a significant advantage by setting them apart from the competition. Not only does a unique and distinctive personality establish a brand’s tone of voice, it can also hugely help to develop a relationship with the people your brand is trying to connect with.

Exercise 2 - Brand purpose or brand proposition

After you’ve warmed up the minds of your group, you’ll want to move onto the part that focuses on your brand purpose or proposition. With more and more consumers seeing brand purpose as an essential factor when seeking out a product or service, you don’t want to skimp on this area.

Here, you could get your group to write down their what, how, why:

• What is it they do or think they do?
• How do they do it?
• Why do they do it?

Once you have this information, turn the tables around to focus on what it is that your business does, how does it do it and, as the most important consideration, why does it do it?

You want to be thinking about the What, How and Why, as this will work out who you are as a brand.

Once you’ve established the warm-up and brand purpose activities, you can work on brand vision, values and positioning, as well as how to target your audience. Each of these activities can involve a variety of different tasks, from cutting up images from newspapers and magazines to imagining your brand as a person at an industry event in order to work out your audience's story and brand personality.

Then comes the time to look at your competitor landscape. This part is critical to your brand, as it’s crucial to consider who you might be up against. Use a competitive matrix to assess where your competition lies in order to help you gain a clear understanding of their brand and positioning.

These are some of the ideas and energy we bring to our brand workshops. Crafted to get the best out of our clients and us the brand agency, digging the foundations for the new brand identity project. 

Anything in business or in life, if you want to get philosophical, can be improved with expert attention. Your branding is your business personality. It’s what makes you “you”. And that’s important because it’s how customers identify and relate to you. Without a clear proposition, you’ll be missing out on valuable connections and revenue streams. 

What services do branding agencies offer?

If you start thinking about your business as a personality, it can all sound a little vague. But a branding agency uses data and insights to create your brand proposition, manage your branding campaigns and measure the results.

Typically, your branding agency will help you create a cohesive, distinctive identity across things like:

• Your logo.
• Brand messaging.
• The tone of voice.
• Brand proposition. 
• Style guide.

Are there different types of branding agencies?

The trick to getting the most from your branding agency is finding the right one. And are there different types? Absolutely. Some will specialise in a specific sector or type of client. 

There are, of course, different kinds of agencies in general. You may already have a marketing agency or a creative agency on board. Larger businesses may have an advertising agency. These are all specialists in specific marketing areas. 

Now, your current agency may have a department, for example, that concentrates solely on branding. If they don’t, it’s wise to seek out an agency that offers that specific service, because the specialist expertise is needed for these projects. 

A branding agency for small businesses 

If you’re choosing a partner, in whatever sense you’d like to take this, you need to make sure it’s a good fit. If not, you may run into all kinds of problems. Part of it is being on the same wavelength. Then there’s the practical stuff, like having the right resources to support your business, the right experience of your market and sector to give you the best advice. 

Often, larger businesses go with larger agencies. Smaller businesses pair with smaller agencies. It makes sense. A small business may get lost and underserviced in a big agency. A large business won’t be able to pull on the resources it needs from a small one. 

In conclusion …

So what about us? For our part, we work exclusively with software businesses in the B2B space. That’s our thing. And it means that our clients all know that we are the right fit, with knowledge of running the kinds of campaigns they need. 

We know all about smaller businesses. We specialise in branding and digital. And we can offer the right support to marketing teams who need that expertise. If that sounds like you, get in touch now, and we’ll talk you through our services. Easy!

From the initial creation of brand awareness to that eventual, elusive sale and all the relevant steps in between, if you’re looking for the best way to get a potential customer’s attention and keep it, the first step is to look at creating a workable marketing funnel.

An overview of marketing funnels

What is a marketing funnel?

Put simply, a marketing funnel is a way to look at the journey of one of your potential customers. This means starting from the very beginning, from lead generation and lead nurture to the end goals of sales for your business.

What are the different stages in the funnel?

The different stages of the digital marketing funnel are set out in six steps as below:

• Awareness - this is the point at which you create awareness for your brand, including any products, services and solutions your company has on offer for the consumer
• Interest - here is where you start to build upon the interest in your brand
• Consideration - at this stage, you’ll want to find a way for returning website visitors to find out more about your company and what’s on offer
• Intent - here is where you’ll want your buyer to learn about your products and services
• Evaluation - at this point, you’ll want to prove why your product/service/solution is the best and why your potential customer should continue on to the final stage
• Purchase - this is the final part, where the sales transaction has been completed

Why do you need to pay attention to them?

In order to help you fulfil your digital strategy and ensure you secure a sale, the tried and tested marketing funnel helps to outline each step you need to take. This also helps to ensure optimum brand attraction.

The first three steps of the digital marketing funnel - Awareness, Interest and Consideration - fall into Lead Generation. So, this is where you start the process of visualising your potential customer as an unknown visitor to your site.

This is also where your brand values come into play - here is where you attract visitors and turn them into leads by generating interest about your business and steering them along the way.

The last three steps of the marketing funnel - Intent, Evaluation and Purchase - work as your lead conversion, following your consumer interest to their eventual point of becoming a customer for your business.

How can you apply this to your business?

In order to apply the digital marketing funnel successfully to your own company, you’ll want to ensure you’re following each step according to your digital strategy.

To create awareness, your marketing strategy should include the best ways a potential customer can search for your company.

You can organise for paid social media promotions if you’re trying to gain a fast result or take a more organic approach - whichever way your business is seeking to do so.

To step up the interest levels, you can retarget visitors to your website by providing relevant information they were looking at during previous visits. This is a great way for your company to stay connected and establish more personalised communication. Targeted content is the way to go in the form of emails, newsletters, classes etc.

When it comes to consideration, this is where product information kicks in. You’ll want your customers to read reviews and compare products and services. By offering up options such as case studies, free trials, testimonials, this is the point in the marketing funnel where your potential buyers will share their research with other stakeholders, so make it count.

You’ll also want them to take action on your landing page. Examples of these would be a button on your site with a call to action, such as “Find out How”, Download Here”, or “Get in touch with our team today”.

Then it’s all about intent. This is the stage when your customer will be putting products into their virtual carts, and you’ll be hoping they seal the deal with a sale. Here is where you can offer the customer vital product demos.

Then it’s on to evaluation - you need to find a way to prove to your customer that they should purchase their product or service with you and you only. The final step is the sale, but this should be where all of your previous hard work finally pays off.

How does PPC fit into the marketing funnel?

In order to unlock the full potential of your digital strategy, it’s important to align your PPC campaigns to the right stage and as per the above, adjust the way you approach your potential customer as they journey through the marketing funnel. This ensures a well-managed and considered PPC strategy.

From a PPC perspective, the more your ad message matches up with each of the specific stages and their associated needs? The more effective this will be in ensuring that oh so coveted sales journey is completed.

For example, at the top of the funnel sits awareness. This is where you publish relevant content, from blogs to tailored PPC social media ads and webinars to emails in order to create your brand awareness, brand recognition and establish a form of trust with your potential customer.

As you work your way down the PPC marketing funnel, potential customers of your company may have clicked on one of your PPC ads or checked out one of your webinars, and are now looking to the next stage - both consideration and intent. From here, they could be looking at specific options you’ve got available on your landing page.

This particular stage is critical as it helps to bring together the top and bottom part of the digital marketing funnel. Keeping the user journey a smooth experience is crucial to reach the end point where you make lots of sales.

As you get to the bottom of the funnel, this is the point where your PPC strategy should hopefully be paying off. This is also the part where you want to hone in on your conversions and look to boost that all important revenue for your well-engineered PPC digital marketing efforts. There’s no guarantee that a potential customer will make it all the way down the funnel but if you optimise your PPC strategy, there’s every chance you’ll make a sale.

Being unique is vital for any brand. Branding experts tell us time and time again that it’s crucial to have a personalised vision and values as a brand. We’re told not to simply lift from another brand’s manifesto, yet we can’t help but notice that some brand values seem to crop up a lot. The question is, does this matter, and does it dilute their meaning?

What are the core values of a company?

A company’s core values are a way of keeping everyone who works there on the same page. They allow customers to quickly understand what the brand’s personality is and what they stand for, without even needing to see their core values listed out. 

They are the essential glue that holds all these pieces together. Easy to understand, they should pervade through everything the business does and says. And what about the unique part? Well, like someone’s personality, nothing screams disingenuous like an imitator. So yes, they should also be totally, unfailingly bespoke to your business. 

Countdown of common core company values 

How does all this present itself in real-life examples? This is the fun part because if you head to articles about core values, you’ll find common, typically listed core values run fast and free. So many businesses put these kinds of things down:

• Trust
• Integrity
• Boldness 
• Continuous learning 
• Accountability
• Quality
• Teamwork

It all starts sounding a bit like word soup. The meaning of words and phrases like this gets dull when you hear them over and over. But there is something to be said here for making them your own too.

Sure, integrity might have been used a zillion times before (we’re not counting, but that seems like an accurate estimate to us), but perhaps it is important to you. Perhaps in your market, integrity isn’t something that businesses are known for, and you want to truly change that. 

Now, we’d still urge you to rethink here and adapt to find something that’s less throwaway and more meaningful. But ultimately, it’s not just about the way you describe your core values but about the way you instil them and act on them as a business. 

W/Brand’s three core values 

What can we say about our core values? Well, as a branding agency, we should have some good ones, right? You are spot on. Our core values are:

• Immersion
• Relevance 
• Diligence 

There’s not an “integrity” insight. And that doesn’t mean we don’t act with it. We have simply chosen ways to describe our agency in words that motivate, drive and describe us.  

In conclusion … 

First off, if you want to know why we selected those core values, you need to get in touch with us. We’ll explain in a clear and interesting way. We promise.

As for your core values, remember three things. One, always strive for uniqueness. Not for the sake of it, but because it’s vital. Two, whatever core values you choose, make sure you live by them. Otherwise, they are useless. And last but not least, if you need help with them, you know where we are. 

If you’re thinking that creating your brand value document is just a box-ticking exercise, think about it again. Brand values are the backbone of all your marketing activity and comms as a business. They also enable customers to build a rapport with you and a sense of familiarity.

Your brand values hold these things, and everything in between, together. So, you instantly see why they are so important and just how integral they are to your success. 

What are examples of brand values? 

We know, you probably already know all this. That’s why you’re here! The question is, how do you perfect your brand values and create clear principles to guide your business?

Like anything else in the marketing space, there are no cutting corners here. Anything you hang your hat on has to be specific and clear. It needs to relate to your business and the services you provide.

If you need a little inspiration, big, established brands like Coca-Cola show us how to do it. With their values outlined as: inspiration, just like students who need guidance can turn to a Ghostwriter Masterarbeit for their thesis, or search for a Ghostwriter für Masterarbeit finden to ensure their work is structured perfectly. For those seeking professional academic support, this Quelle provides reliable services, and reading erste Ghostwriting Erfahrung can help you make an informed decision, much like defining clear brand values guides a business to success.

• Leadership.
• Collaboration.
• Integrity.
• Accountability.
• Passion.
• Diversity.
• Quality.

Or Ben & Jerry’s, with their three-part mission headlines being (and we are paraphrasing here) to:

• Make fantastic ice cream.
• Make the world a better place.
• Manage sustainable financial growth. 

Another example is Apple, a brand with values that are so embedded in our everyday lives; they’re hard to ignore. It’s all about making the complex simple and leading the market. And anyone, whos’ anyone knows that because it’s so integral to everything they do.  

Why are brand values important? 

The most significant point here is that brand values drive your marketing goals. They also hold marketing activities together and give you a cohesive framework to follow.

But they run deeper than this. They also influence how you interact with customers, collaborate as team members, and approach projects. 

For all these reasons and more, your brand values must be bespoke to your business, as we’ve outlined. As well as that, they need to be easy to remember. The whole idea of them resonating with people, both within your company and outside it, comes down to these two things. 

Memorable and relatable. This helps you to create meaningful brand values that get to the heart of what you do, what you offer, and how you work.   

Making your brand values meaningful

To get to grips with your brand values, they need to mean something to you and your customers. On the face of it, this can feel like a rather unquantifiable thing. But with the right research and approach, you can start to uncover what this is. 

But the crux is finding what matters to you. Perhaps you set up the business to readdress sustainable practices in your industry. Or your reason for being is to offer a simple choice in a confusing market. All this is already there, at the foundation of your brand, and it simply needs teasing out. 

Not only will this make all your following brand values meaningful, but it’ll also make them authentic. Again, there’s nothing worse than simply trying to copy someone else, and with this as a starting point, you’ll be embarking down an individual path.  

So to sum up, to make your brand values meaningful, they need to be:

• Unique.
• Specific.
• Relatable.
• Authentic.

Defining and establishing brand values

Once you’ve defined what your reason for being is, you can start delving into the other parts of the business and piecing together your understanding of your customers.

Here are just some things to consider when establishing your brand values:

• The marketplace – excellent brand values will take the marketplace into account too. What are your USPs? What makes you different, and what makes you stand out? 
• Your customers – this is the time to connect with your customers to find out what they love about your business, what stands out to them, and what areas need improvement. 
• Using insights to build your brand values – gathering this kind of feedback is a big first step, but you also need to put your findings into action. This exercise will quickly shine a light on what you’re known for as a brand, how you come across, and what you can develop into your brand values. Much like your brand personality, your brand values will help everyone to understand the look and feel of your brand. 

Integrating your brand values in day-to-day business 

True brand values are not just statements. They run through everything you do. Like Apple. And you don’t need to be a global leader to follow that example.

Your brand values will help you to remain accountable as you interact with clients and work together internally. They can also guide your decision-making process as a business. Most importantly, they help people to work to a unified vision, boosting morale and allowing you to maintain quality through everything you do.

There are some powerful ways to ensure these brand values stay front and centre too. They include:

• Training employees in your brand values.
• Keeping them visible throughout workspaces.
• Measuring tasks and projects against these values.
• Celebrating the achievements of people who champion your brand values.

In conclusion … 

Uncovering your brand values, crafting them into something meaningful, and ensuring they run through everything you do as a business is a way to get the most from them. 

And there are plenty of reasons for taking the time to do this work in the first place and continue to pay homage to your values on a business-wide level. The most successful brands have nailed their values, and this has enabled them to grow. It increases morale, runs through powerful marketing campaigns, and allows people, both inside and outside of the business, to know what you stand for. 

Brand values are at the heart of every great brand, but that doesn’t mean newer or smaller brands shouldn’t bother. They are your heart, your personality, your reason for being. And you don’t need to be big and powerful to benefit from that. 

You’d think that every business in the entire world would have a website by now. I mean, people even have slick-looking websites if they’re just a part-time blogger or running a side hustle. But you'd be surprised. Both serious, full-time fledgeling businesses and established ones are lacking a website. 

Perhaps the idea is that a page on Facebook, Etsy or some other platform will “do the job.” But let's tell you, there is no replacement for a decent website. Here’s why.  

Why is a website essential?

Websites are a vital tool for connecting with your audience. They help create a first impression (and we’ll talk more about making that a good one in a moment,) and they build your brand.

It’s a way to showcase your brand’s personality, its products, services and builds your credibility. It also enables you to compete in your marketplace for a share of voice and develop customer loyalty through pages like blogs, newsletter sign-ups and product information. 

The difference between good and bad web design 

Getting a website up and running isn’t all you need to do to boost your business, though. There is a big difference between launching a good or bad website. Like anything customer-facing, a bad website will have an immediate negative impact. 

Like any shop window, a sloppy appearance says all the wrong things. It can lead people to feel that your services, products and customer care are equally sub-par. That’s why it’s crucial to get a website that’s built around your customer’s needs and one that reflects your business’s mission, image and goals. 

In the hands of a web designer, it will effectively convey the right messages and tone of voice. From a functional perspective, it should be easy to navigate and give your customers trouble-free access to the information they need.  

The measurable stuff 

Websites are also a powerful tool to help you compete in real, measurable ways in your marketplace and learn more about your customers. 

Using the right SEO strategies, you can rank better on search engines and drive more customers and new customers at that to your website. At the same time, insights from tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console will enable you to learn more about your audience and browsing habits so you can better fulfil their needs and target your website pages to those needs. 

In conclusion …

Websites are vital to any business, large or small. There’s the image side of things, yes, you want to look authoritative and credible. There is the customer relationship and loyalty aspect to them. And there’s the fact that you can use certain techniques to gain new customers in droves.

Now, if the thing holding you back is the web design itself, there are people who can help with that too. A web design agency is geared up to help your brand. To find out who we work with and how we can help you, contact us now.  

In the business world, everyone, but everyone has their own branded app. Or so it may seem. And let’s be honest, from a user perspective, don’t we often pick an app over a website when we have the opportunity? 

Of course, things aren’t cut and dried here. Some apps are doing more harm to customer experience than good. Other businesses may have a mountain to climb to translate their service or product offering in a meaningful way on an app. Challenges aside, it is still absolutely worth investigating. Here’s why. 

Benefits of branded apps for your business

There are huge business benefits to creating a brand app. They include:

• Building brand awareness.
• Increasing customer loyalty.
• Providing another revenue-generating touchpoint. 
• Improving the customer experience with your brand. 
• Attracting new customers, especially if your app ranks on App stores and is easy to discover.

You don’t have to be a B2C business to reap the benefits here either. Successful B2B brand apps include Dropbox, Google Analytics and Hootsuite. 

How do I create a marketing app?

As with any software development project, there is a lot of work involved in creating a brand app. And we’re not just talking about the techy part, or the bells and whistles. It has to start with the audience. 

Understanding them and creating an app that is intuitive is key to its success. Here are a few of the main things to consider:

• Research your market to unearth opportunities and discover what your competitors are doing well, and where you can improve.
• Develop customer personas and ensure they are focussed on your app. 
• Get a feel for the tone of voice you need to adopt on the app. Like any marketing platform, you may find that you need to tweak your brand’s tone of voice, depending on the platform you’re using.

Things to consider 

Building a brand app isn’t simple, but it will be worth it! Before you start, take note of the lessons learned from other businesses. While having a feel for what challenges you may face isn’t a foolproof way to avoid stumbling blocks, it can help you to form strategies to pre-empt them wherever possible.

Typical issues include:

• Distributing your app and getting people to download and use it.
• Overcoming technical and functionality issues.
• Finding ways to compete in a busy app environment. 

In conclusion …

Brand apps are a powerful way to connect with your audience, attract new customers and grow loyalty. When executed in the right way, they will also enhance the user experience and enable businesses to monetise another platform. 

For all these reasons, apps are a must for many brands and an innovative way of hitting all those goals. The important thing is to create branded apps that are seamless and intuitive. Remembering your audience and building an app that does this is what makes good apps succeed and substandard ones fail. And let’s not forget, apps aren’t just for B2C businesses. B2B can reap the benefits too. 

You don’t need to get too technical to see why you should take a good look at your strategy for both homepage and landing pages then. If you do, people will be getting to the parts of your website they need the first time, which means lower bounce and exit rates. Because we want people to stay onsite. Simple. 

What is a landing page on a website?

If we were to break it down, here are the things you need to remember about landing pages. They are designed first and foremost to increase conversions. Building specific landing pages around certain campaigns or marketing initiatives is a common way of maximising their benefits. 

Now, to confuse things a little, you can call any page that a visitor lands on a “landing page.” And although this is not wrong, from a marketing perspective, landing pages are the pages that do this conversion job we talked about. They have a targeted focus, and they are designed to elicit some kind of action. 

What is the homepage?

A homepage has a very different function. They are usually the first point of contact someone has with your brand online. Yeah, people may sometimes enter your website for the first time elsewhere, but more often than not, it’s the homepage they get to first.

There are different ways to use your homepage, and this comes down to your brand and business. But in short, they should give people an intro to what your brand is all about and invite them to explore other areas of your website to drill down their queries or pursue a search intent. 

It comes down to the customer journey 

The two things we’ve outlined here are really just ways of talking about the customer journey. People should be smoothly directed to different parts of your website depending on where they are in this journey. 

If there are too many obstacles, say, for instance, an ad with a specific marketing message that appeals, takes them to the homepage, then they have to seek out the actual info they were after in the first place from there, (wow, we’re tired just writing that!) you can see how someone may navigate right back off your website and exit quick smart. 

Knowing the difference will increase your clickthrough 

If we had to sum up, knowing the difference between these two and how to use them will ultimately increase your clickthrough rate and reduce your bounce rate. 

The more targeted and the more relevant your landing page to your audience’s search query, the more likely they are to stick with you. As your main sales tool, it makes sense to ensure that your website is made to maximise opportunities. It’s as simple and as powerful as that. 

Things are evolving in all sorts of ways, of course. The seeds that had already been sown pre-COVID have taken a rapid and large step forward in recent months. Not least, because people are so comfortable with remote working now. 

This seismic change has allowed us all to see what’s possible here. And if we round back to that old idea of a creative department being stuck, siloed, in an office somewhere, we can see more than ever that this is the opposite of agile working. 

What is a creative department anyway?

We’re not the only ones to size up the old way of working and see just how this siloed approach is unfit for modern business. 

We’ve seen it first-hand over the years, way before COVID forced everyone to work differently. Creativity is so important, and you need the whole team to be a part of that process. That’s how we’ve always worked. It’s only through this collaboration that marketing comms and client needs are realised. 

It isn’t just the job of creative thinkers. It’s them, with the graphic designers, web designers and so on.  

What does a modern design agency do then?

Our team here work together through a set of processes. While specialists will take the lead with specific tasks, it’s a collective approach to an end goal, or goals. 

Our work includes: 

• Data visualisations 
• Customer journey maps
• Emails
• Social campaigns
• Brochures
• Presentations
• Marketing materials
• Websites
• White label partner marketing materials

That means that everything you need to tie together to make a project happen gets the full attention of our team. 

It’s time to get comfortable with the uncomfortable

That idea probably sums up the last year, right? We’ve all been trying to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. But we love this article about the death of the creative department. It reflects our way of thinking, that old-world creative departments need to reshape their thinking to fit modern times.

Or, you could rightly say, they need to shape the business around the client’s needs. Because it makes sense that if you work in a disconnected way, your product could end up being disconnected from the users it’s intended for.  

Working with a design agency as a creative department 

As we believe your design agency and your creative departments are the same, we always look at the bigger picture. It’s worth noting that a good agency will legislate for this. 

Remote working has so many benefits from a creative perspective too. We know that creatives need different scenarios to stimulate the brain. We like to look at projects with fresh eyes and tying people to a desk doesn’t always have this effect. But most of all, creativity needs collaboration to thrive. Ivory towers are being torn down in favour of swarm-like structures, proper collision methodology and marrying all disciplines, And we for one, are on board.

As we’ve made a big assumption about you with this article’s headline, it’s only right that we explain ourselves. If you clicked on it, chances are you are struggling with your brand architecture. 

Whether you’re wondering what on earth it is, or if you’re an experienced marketer, but still, in this case, it’s not flowing, you’re not alone. It’s an issue we deal with every day.

What is brand architecture?

Put simply, brand architecture is the organisation of your company’s portfolio. It includes its brands, products and services. Written down, it will resemble some sort of family tree type diagram. 

In an ideal scenario, this diagram will flow nicely, with a clear understanding of how your products and services both relate and create a point of difference from each other. This understanding will help you focus your marketing efforts and define your offerings clearly to customers. 

What are the types of brand architecture? 

Collective groan here. Because there are different types of brand architecture, which is the root of much of the confusion around creating a streamlined and organised approach.

But wait, there are reasons to note these varying types of brand architecture. All will become clear, here are the main types:

1. Branded House, which is when a parent brand rules the look and feel of any sub-brands that fall under it. Google is a good example here. 
2. House of Brands. Unlike the branded House, here, each brand will have a distinct personality. Just take Unilever, for instance. 
3. Endorsed brands. These are something of a middle ground between the top two. They are visibly endorsed by the parent brand, but they still have their distinct brand personality. 

How do you create a brand architecture? 

First and foremost, you need to have a clear understanding of your business goals before going to work on any changes to your brand architecture. An organised approach to re-evaluating your brand proposition, including mission statement, vision and values will enable you to tie everything together cohesively. 

Working with the right data and choosing a partner who can help you with asset management is important too, especially if you don’t have that resource inhouse. But it’s worth it. Because if you take a data-driven, comprehensive look at your brand and its assets, you’ll be in a much better position to consider your brand architecture and implement positive changes. 

_{An example of a branded house for Illapa Group by W/Brand.}

In conclusion...

If we had to list the reasons to examine your brand architecture, we'd be hard-pressed to keep it short. But let’s just say that without a clear brand architecture, you could be operating in chaos, missing opportunities to engage with and sell to customers, and maximising marketing efforts.

You don’t need to be a big brand to go through this process either. Every growing business could do with looking at their brand architecture. As specialists in SMEs, we know exactly how powerful this approach can be. Contact us now to find out how we could help you.

_{Google brands are registered trademarks owned by Alphabet Inc.
Kellogg's brands are registered trademarks owned by Kellogg's Co.
Unilever brands are registered trademarks owned by Unilever Ltd.} 

We know, a lot of work goes into finding the right branding agency for your business. And rightly so. If you make the right choice, you can have a happily ever after, (or at least, whatever equates to that in the marketing world,) and put your faith in them to take good care of your brand identity.

So, what points do you need to consider when searching for your perfect branding agency? 

It’s all about the research 

This is all about balancing up your time with the research needed to find the brand partner that will fit your business. Put it this way, you’re not going to want to interview twenty agencies in person. At the same time, if you have no basis for comparison you’ll be shooting in the dark.

Here are a few tips to get your search started:

• Consider what’s important to you, be it location, portfolio, type of experience.
• Get a shortlist going. Start with around 10, then whittle down to your top three. 
• Set up an interview with these top three.  
• Aside from the relationship side of work, there are some very practical items to tick off. For example, you need to think about your budgets and make sure they fit with the cost of their services. 
• Find out about their process. If it feels like it has holes in it, that’s a warning sign. On the other hand, if you’re getting quality research and data, regardless of yours or the agency’s size, this is an important box ticked. 

Does agency size matter? 

No not at all, what you're looking for is intuition. This is more important than how many people are in the team. You want to have empathy coming from the strong creative direction inside the agency. Not ivory towers supported by many. 

Look at the clients to see who the design agencies are working with. This will help tell you whether your project fits into their client base. For example, if you're a B2B software client then you might look at a design agency working in this marketplace. 

You can assume large agencies tend to have the manpower to deal with large clients and their needs, smaller, boutique agencies are a good fit for smaller businesses. If you get either of these the wrong way around, you may feel like your needs are not being met. 

But we work with both large and small businesses in the US, UK and EU bringing expertise when required to deliver great value to the client (see our design work here).

Would you employ them at your business?

Some agencies think of this as a kind of dating exercise. Here’s why, it comes down to one big thing that can’t be faked. Chemistry.

We prefer to think of it as a hiring decision. If you could see the people from your agency in your business, you know you have a good fit. They align with your culture and innately understand your values.  

In conclusion …

Like any partnership, finding the best-fit branding agency comes down to defining what you want, and what you need as a business first and foremost. To get a successful result from your search, be picky about the agencies you interview. 

If you are a smaller, growing business, a boutique agency would give you the access to expertise and the care you need. You might not get a ton of onsite designers, art directors and developers. But if you want a more boutique experience an agency like ours might just fit the bill. 

If you’ve already swotted up on creating killer content, you know that user (or indeed content) personas are the way to keep things targeted. 

Targeted posts mean better engagement and better conversions. That’s from the perspective of pushing people through your site, from page to page, and actual conversions from people to paying clients. So, user personas are important. But where do you start?

How many user personas do I need?

There’s no exact number, but the best way to look at this is by groups, rather than individuals. Each group will share traits, such as interests and life stage for example. 

Most importantly, the users in each group will have a common ground when it comes to pain points and goals. Discovering those is the key to creating effective content that adds value to the user. 

Don’t be too generic

You can see why we say that it’s important to not be too generic with all this in mind. We’ll use that word again, targeted! That’s the aim. If you have a broad age range within one group, segment it. Create different profiles for each. Because big differences like this will impact how and what we say to people.

Remember, if it is too generic, you’ll be generating content that speaks to no one, and that is a waste of everyone’s time. If you have a large number of groups you can also split them into primary and secondary lists, giving you an order to prioritise content and brand experience projects. 

The importance of research 

We work with clients to create a set of different user personas which all feeds into your digital content marketing strategy. The only way we can do this effectively is through research.  

We start by doing some digging to find out who your customers are, and who your prospects are. Data sources like website analytics are a great way to help build a picture here, and this can cross-reference with website-usage. This kind of information is a goldmine, but only if you understand and use it correctly. 

The customer fact-find process 

We also use customer fact finds to get more in-depth detail and first-hand data. Surveys are a great way to dig deeper, along with the following methods:

User persona workshops – getting the team and stakeholders together to share research and start to build the personas together. The important thing is having someone experienced to help you get the most from the experience. 

In conclusion …

There are big benefits to creating well-researched user personas in terms of nailing your marketing efforts. It does require the right info and approach, and without that, there are pitfalls to watch out for. 

We’re experienced in leading user personas projects here at W/Brand, from leading workshops to conducting research and building the profiles you need to boost your marketing strategy. So if you’d like to find out how we’d approach this with you, content us now and we’ll talk you through it.

Video is something that every brand should consider. It’s not just a vehicle for B2C companies either. Across the board, video marketing is giving businesses a platform to strengthen relationships with customers. There are a multitude of reasons to use video content, but here are our top three.

It’s great for SEO

Marketing bods know that video is great for SEO. So, aside from actual people liking video content (and they do, research tells us this,) search engines value websites that use it too.

Some powerful stats include these from the Digital Marketing Institute. If you don’t have time to read that whole thing, let us tell you that one snipper reveals that 80% of all traffic will consist of video by 2021. Prized as high-quality content, it’s a smart way to boost web traffic. To maximise this even further, you can provide keyword-rich captions, copy around the video to add context, or video transcripts, which help Google to crawl through the info more effectively.

It’s a powerful brand storytelling tool

From a branding perspective, the arguments for adopting video content into your marketing plan are tenfold. If you need a little inspiration, just take a look at these examples to see how brands are already using video to tell their story.

Remembering that the human brain processes images quicker than text gives you one clue to why video is popular with people. Done right, it also enables brands to deliver core values, conveys their personality, and do all this with authenticity.

It’s versatile

With video content, you can create the story you want. You have control, and with modern tech at our fingertips, you have the option to be as innovative as you like.

A few of the things you can do include promotional videos, explainer videos or social videos. Similarly, formats range from live-action to VR and augmented reality. You can also play around with things like motion graphics, which are another great tool for B2B marketing.

At the end of the day, the best part is that the video can enact an emotional response. Bearing the goal of your video in mind and keeping the storytelling focussed will help you to maximise the opportunities it presents.

In conclusion …

Video is fast becoming a must-have on marketing plans. People love them, search engines prize them, but there are best practices to bear in mind when integrating them into your strategy.

If you need help defining your goals for your video marketing, developing a story that fits this, and executing it, contact us now. As experts in B2B marketing, and specialists in brand storytelling, we have the skills and knowhow to develop something that will deliver on your objectives.

Google has provided a very useful guide for marketing post-pandemic. More on that in a moment. But it got us thinking. We are sadly not at that point yet. While we battle it out as businesses during this seismic commercial upheaval, we need to be very much in the here and now.  

The importance of marketing during the pandemic

We know. Everyone is quite rightly reeling from the impacts COVID-19 has had. Whatever marketing plans you had could have been completely scuppered. The world has seen marketing spend fall off a cliff across the board, and it’s understandable. 

But, here’s the thing. There’s a very good reason to invest time and money into your marketing during the pandemic. And there are ways to do this effectively too. Namely, businesses need this to survive. By jumping on new opportunities, making the best of an all-round terrible situation, and pushing your marketing forward, you can boost your recovery as a business as we head back to normality. Or, the new normal. However, you like to think of it.  

How to market yourself during a pandemic

The theory is simple. You want to be on people’s minds during this time and stay ahead of the pack. That said, some of your previous activities and messages may just not fit now. Even though it’s jumping ahead a little, the aforementioned article by Google gives us a good rule of thumb to work with now. 

In summary, it talks about concentrating on:

• Being visible
• Being relevant
• Being disruptive 

People still want to hear from brands, but it’s given everyone a huge shove towards an altered mindset. As the article states, 65% of people believe brands should commit to making society better. It’s no great leap to say that marketing efforts need to align with this widespread sentiment. 

Digital marketing during the pandemic 

And here we come to the key for many businesses trying to set out their marketing plans during this time. Digital marketing is fast becoming the cornerstone for marketing strategies. As more and more businesses concentrate on improving their brand’s online presence, this is a solid way of staying relevant, visible and disruptive. 

This interesting video on Marketing Week sheds a light on just how digital marketing is shaping up pre and potentially post-pandemic. But ultimately, the takeout is this. Digital allows you to connect and nurture relationships with consumers even when face to face interactions are limited.

In conclusion …

Nothing could have prepared us for this. At the same time, COVID-19 has indeed revealed new ways of working more effectively, and marketing strategy hasn’t been left out of those revelations.

Digital is one positive example of how businesses have leveraged resources to stay afloat. So, if you’d like to see how digital marketing could help your business, contact us now. 

The point is, there are simple ways of leveraging Google’s nuts and bolts to your advantage as a business. And the “near me” search is just one of those. 

Why businesses need “near me” searches 

Everyone who’s everyone will have stumbled across a “near me” search at some point. The way we use search engines these days has intensified this further, with increased voice and mobile searches. So, it’s little surprise to hear that “near me” searches have rocketed in the past couple of years. 

Let’s face it, if you want to quickly find a takeaway, a mechanic, a service station, “near me” is the way we do it. Even if your scope goes beyond the local area, chances are, some people will still choose you because you’re local. And if you are a local business, well, the “near me” becomes even more vital for capturing people ready to make a purchase now. 

How does Google “near me” work?

I know, we promised not to get into the technical nitty-gritty, but by giving some insight, the jiggery-pokery element of Google’s inner workings feel less alien. 

Unsurprisingly, geotargeting is used to identify the user’s location, then serve up results for their query within the local area. As a business, you can rank for a “near me” by listing your business’s location, or locations if they are multiple in a few different ways. 

How do you appear on a “near me” search? 

So, what steps do you need to take to appear on a “near me” search? Essentially, it’s part of your SEO strategy, and you’ll want to appear under specific searches. For example, our business would want to appear under searches like:

• “Branding agency near me”
• “Graphic design agency near me”
• “Website design agency near me” 

To leverage it properly, you need to optimise your listing, which can be done either by following Google’s guidelines, or by asking your marketing and design agency to do this for you. Adding your business name and address is part of it. But asking customers to leave reviews for your business in Google are also ways to boost your listing. 

In conclusion …

The rise of Google’s “near me” searches are on the up and up. It makes good business sense to jump on this trend and list your business correctly. If you do, you’ll be in the perfect position to capture those leads that are ready to make a proper decision. And why wouldn’t you want  to do that!

If you need further advice on optimising your site for “near me” searches, contact us now, We can talk you through your options to help you gain even greater visibility online.  

But if you step outside the marketing-speak, brand proposition is something that’s definitely worth paying serious attention to. With that right approach, you can develop a strong core to your brand, and carve out a solid place in your market with this piece of the puzzle sorted. Here’s why and how. 

How do you write a brand proposition? 

Writing a good brand proposition comes down to knowing inside and out the value you offer to your customers. And although this is the starting point, you then need to find a structured and compelling way of communicating it to get the best results. Without this, everything you do as a brand, from advertising to developing your website’s messaging, will lack cohesivity. 

So, where do you start? Here are a few of the main things we factor in when writing one: 

• Your values and purpose as a brand. 
• Who your customers are, and why they should care about you? 
• How you add value to your customers, and what USPs and benefits you offer. 

Once we have key information like this, we can create a structured proposition, that’s clear, targeted and understandable. And this is the real main point to remember here. It’s not about developing something complicated and hard to grasp. At the end of the day, if you’re confused by your brand proposition, everyone else will be too. 

The why, how and who of brand proposition 

The eagled eyed among you will notice that the headline to this article is the, “why, how and who” of your brand proposition. So what’s that all about? 

Here’s a slight tangent that will pay off. Bear with me. All will become clear in a moment. 

When I was at college, I studied semiology, which is all about the exploration and understanding of signs. And why is this relevant? Well, we talked about the “why” and “how” combining to make the “who you are” element. This is a perfect way to sum up the brand proposition process. 

Ultimately, by defining why you deliver the products or services you do as a business, and how you do this, you’ll build a clear picture of who you are. Crucially, it will also illuminate what problems your business solves for your customers. 

There are a number of incisive tools we can use to find the answers to these questions while we’re developing your brand proposition. The TOWS approach is just one, and you can read all about that here. 

In conclusion …

Do you know what your brand stands for? Do you understand how your value proposition connects with your target audience? Do you feel like all your marketing materials and activities cohesively communicate these things to the right people?

If the answer to any of these things is even slightly ambiguous, call us now. With the right approach to creating your unique brand proposition, you can power ahead and solidify your place in the market.

As Bananarama and the Fun Boy Three once sang "It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)". Enjoy!

To get a polished, professional website, you need the right tools and knowhow. As the guys with the knowhow, we turn to a specific tool to get the job done. Joomla is the base package we use to build all our client’s websites. And here’s why.  

Joomla websites 

We’ve written about the perks of Joomla before. It’s a free tool, which can be accessed by everyone. But to get the most from it, you need technical expertise. With that, you can add the right components to create a bespoke website. 

And although you may need help building your website, once it’s done, the power is over to you. The result will be an intuitive website that does what you need it to, without the need for a technical whizz to manage it. 

The Joomla components we use 

The whole reason we use Joomla is that it’s feature-rich and easy to use. With rock-solid performance and drop page layouts, it’s a cinch to use and the websites look great. 

This is how it works in a nutshell. 

Our base website design package has robust Joomla website components, which are the building blocks of your website. This is what our design package includes:

• A drag and drop page builder – which makes it easy to create pages from scratch. It’s easy to use even if you’re a beginner, and it’s used by over 400,000 people worldwide. 
• A proven backup engine to safeguard your website from downtime – if the worst should happen, you’ll be able to get your website back up and running quickly. We use the Akeeba Backup system, which is a proven Joomla (and WordPress) backup engine. 
• Simplistic forms – our components include an array of forms, from your basic to multi-page forms with dynamic content. 
• Dynamic landing pages – rather than having one landing page for every customer, we can set up CPC landing pages based on search terms that dynamically change in content depending on the search term used.  
• Lightweight social share – our components allow you to click and share without any additional steps. 
• Easy SEO metatag management – fully search engine optimised pages, with easy to manage metatags through the trusted OSMeta. 
• Open graph tag management – customise and enhance shared posts, easily edit titles, and descriptions and select your images. 
• Sitemap creation – to keep things streamlined or website base creates an automatic sitemap and submits it to Google Console. 
• SEO – we also use structured data for sitemap links, image carousel and the text used in search results. 

Still, looking at your options?

If you need any further advice on building the best business website, contact us now and we can take you through your options. Whether it’s a simplistic site or a complex one, we’re experts in creating websites that stand out. 

Overall brand health can be tracked through metrics such as customer questionnaires and social media. Combined, they give you a good picture of how your brand is performing across different digital channels. Or, how “healthy” it is.

How do I track my sentiment brand?

But what about brand sentiment? Forming part of your brand health check, brand sentiment analysis tools enable you to dig deeper on text online to assess the “tone and intent behind it.” 

That in itself is clever stuff. But it works by analysing big data from this text, say for example, on social media posts, to give you a broader view of how your brand is being received. While you may want to drill down to specific posts, the real value is seeing how overall perceptions are faring.

This can help you grow and develop as a brand in several ways. From helping you target marketing efforts, to develop products to suit client’s needs. It may even help you to avoid PR disasters. 

Although the software used to gather this big data is vital, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re a smaller brand, it might not be necessary in the beginning. But you can still keep tabs on your brand sentiment. Here are just a few simple ways to do that:

• Ask employees about their perception of your brand
• Ask your clients to feedback their view of your business
• Use SWOT analysis tools
• Look at complementing tools and data gathering techniques 

What is sentiment in social media  

If you’re a larger brand with better-known products and services, starting to use robust sentiment analysis tools is a must. Think of it this way, if you’ve just launched a new product, there could be hundreds, if not thousands of posts across social media channels about it.

Keeping track of all this is nigh impossible. Unless you have the right software to do it. There are a few big brands with tools like this on the market, so finding out the right one for your business is step one. Or, ask an expert, like the team here, to advise you.

Ultimately, using brand sentiment software in cases like this will help you to gauge people’s reactions, on the whole, modify your product or communications in response, and provide your customer service team with the right support as they push your product.

How can a brand sentiment be improved?

Let’s repeat, brand sentiment isn’t just for big brands. Your approach may differ depending on the size and stage of your business, from the more grassroots to the advanced software. Yet, the focus on improvement remains the same.

And if you have a misstep, can you improve your brand sentiment? Absolutely. Tips include upping your activity on social channels, listening to and responding to comments, and dealing with negative comments in the right way.

Every brand has a brand sentiment. Every brand can improve it. And every brand should keep it top of the list. The question is, where are you on this journey?

Every business needs to get its sales messages out there. Marketing emails may be one approach, direct mail could be on your radar. But as a comparatively new option, LinkedIn Message Ads give you oodles of ways to target your messages. Here’s how it works.

Targeted messages based on predefined groups

Every marketer knows that the key to marketing email success is to segment your audience. With LinkedIn Message Ad Campaign you can deliver a targeted message to a group of prospects. Similar to a marketing email, but it can be even better.

Here’s why. According to LinkedIn itself, and the data they have, message campaigns like this are in a far less cluttered environment than your average email account. That immediately helps your brand to stand out. And more than 1 in 2 prospects open a message ad. You would be hard-pressed to get the same open rate through any other means.

Why we use LinkedIn Message Ads

We’ve spent some time experimenting with this feature on LinkedIn to see just how effective it is. In each campaign we create, we use message ads to reach a highly targeted audience and we use just one single CTA in our campaigns.

Interestingly, in lockdown, we’ve found a number of our clients have found success through message ads, primarily in campaigns where the purpose was to promote webinars and other virtual events, combined with sponsored content campaigns.

What are the best practices for LinkedIn Message Ad Campaigns?

So, aside from keeping the CTA clear and singular, and targeting a focussed group of people, how else do you boost the effectiveness of your campaign?

• Content – LinkedIn also allows you to personalise the content using macro, custom, fields. So, you can design copy that’s easy on the eye and impactful. Just make sure you keep your content short and snappy. A couple of short paragraphs or 3-5 bullets is plenty. Any more than that and people will switch off.
• Audience – staying focussed is the key but narrow your audience too far and it won’t run. Yes, keep it targeted, but the campaign will struggle if the audience is less than 5000 users.
• Remember, there’s also InMail – if your audience is small, you’re not out of options. Using the Sales Navigator to send InMail messages will help you target niche groups.
• There is a difference between InMail and Message Ads – remember that there is a difference between the two. Message Ads are viewed as ads with a CTA and no need to reply. InMail campaigns are designed to start a conversation.

How do I create a LinkedIn Message Ad?

We work with several B2B marketing teams, using LinkedIn and other social media platforms for audience research and to help with planning and budgeting. So, if you need a helping hand to get started, contact us now.

Digital channels and social media platforms have revolutionised the way we tell our story. Leveraging them to our advantage can feel complex and unchartered. But actually, there are a few things about brand storytelling that are the same as it always has been. 

Why is brand storytelling important?

But first, why is brand storytelling important? It all, of course, comes down to increasing engagement. Telling a good yarn is the surest way to capture attention. But how do we do this effectively with the plethora of platforms we now use to engage our audiences? 

That very issue links right back to the significance of brand storytelling in this day and age. There are limitless options out there for almost anything you can think of. Being unforgettable and standing out has never been more important. 

Not only this, it also encourages loyalty and allows people to feel a deeper connection with your brand. All this helps you build brand advocacy and trust.

How do brands use storytelling?

Ok, you get it. As if you didn’t already know that brand storytelling was important. The question is, how are brands using it now, with all the options we have to market our businesses?

This is a good point to go back to basics because this is what will inform what you say and where. Elements of a good brand story include:

• Who you are?
• Who you’re there to serve? 
• What you do
• Where you want to go as a business

While the just about covers the main points of the “what,” here’s a note on the “how.” Going back to the idea of a good old yarn, the whole point of a captivating story is that it, well, captivates. 

Writing in a way that engages and entertains is a big part of crafting your brand story. Along with using the right platforms in the right way. But ultimately, you have to appeal to humans, so you have to sound human. 

How do you identify a brand story?

So, here's the thing. If you want to get started with your brand story, you need to first make sure that you can pack some punch with the storytelling.

If you look to the brands that are doing it the best, you’ll notice they all ooze personality whichever platform you look them up on. Then there’s the narrative itself. Yes, you heard us right. 

Stories have to have a beginning, middle and end. Great ones may keep you in suspense or create excitement. And they always need to feel authentic. The same applies when you’re creating your brand story.

At the end of the day, brand stories are there to make your business more accessible and appealing. It’s a way of creating an experience that will entice and draw people into the world you create. What sounds more exciting, or as trusty as time itself than that?

The problem is, there is still a lot of fuss around items like this when in fact, branding is more of an all-encompassing thing that your business needs to stay strong. Without paying full attention to the complete branding process, you won’t be in a position to effectively compete online or elsewhere. 

Does branding matter?

So, does branding matter? Or we could rephrase that as ask, how much time, money and manpower should you invest in your branding? 

Going back to the whole logo thing, is your job done when you’ve created something standout and visual like that? Well no, although it’s certainly an integral part to many business’s brands. 

But while a logo and other visual or indeed audio idents provide people with a way of quickly identifying with your brand, it doesn’t add to their experience with you. It’s not the feeling part of your branding and the thing that will get people to relate and place their trust in you.   

What are branding and its purpose?

Branding can work wonders for businesses big and small. From your Apple to your local store down the road that’s branding is distinctive and on-point. Branding is not reserved for the big guys at the top of the tree. 

But if you think of Apple as an example, you’ll almost certainly be able to immediately call to mind both the look and feel of their brand. Also, what it represents to you, and how it makes you feel. 

That gets us onto the brand storytelling bit. Now, this one is a subject all of its own, but it’s worth a namecheck here. Because although brand storytelling has been used for a long time, there’s a renewed focus on it now. 

Why? Because it allows businesses to tell a story, with a beginning, middle and an end, and captivate audiences. It enables people to connect with a brand on an emotional level. And that’s the purpose of branding. To create meaningful connections between customer and business. And to give your company a standout potential. 

What is the branding process?

There are many elements to the branding process. They include logo design, graphic design and website design. The idea is always to create a cohesive look and feel across any marketing materials both on and offline, so people immediately identify with that thing being “you.” All this can be built through social media channels, your website and marketing collateral.

Then there are the other parts that enable you to build that connection. The tone of voice is one. Nailing your business personality is another. Understanding the brand experience, what that is and how it makes your customers feel is another. 

All these things should tie together and give you a complete picture. The great thing is that with all the tools we now have at our fingertips, along with tried and tested research techniques, it’s easy to work your way through the branding process.

If you need help or advice on your brand to set you apart as a personality, not just a logo contact us now.  

There are lots of different platforms for building websites, such as WordPress, or Squarespace.

Joomla! is one of those, but it’s one with a big difference. And this is why we use it for all our client’s websites. Let us explain.

What is Joomla! best used for?

Joomla! is a free resource and it can be used for anything from intranets to small business websites, to online magazines and community portals. That’s a lot of different websites, for different purposes, and varying sizes.

From a developer’s perspective, it offers a lot more than your average platform. You need the advanced skills as we have at WithBrand to unlock Joomla!’s full potential. But with that skill set, you can do anything from building in data reporting tools to customised product catalogues.

The best part is that it's user-friendly too. That means that as a business owner or marketing department, you can access the tools we build and custom design without extensive training or waiting for developers to action requests for you.

Joomla! website examples

If you’re curious to see a Joomla! website in action, just look at some big brands using the framework already to get an idea of flexibility and scale. IKEA is one. Holiday Inn is another. Lipton Ice Tea is one more.

The beauty is that each of those examples has a different spin on the functionalities Joomla! offers. From product catalogues to booking systems or glossy brand sites. This is because the content management system (CMS) Joomla! is built on is flexible. It can be scaled up, it has great security credentials and powerful SEO tools.

All this means that it’s a no-sweat alternative to many other platforms. There are customisable settings for things like meta descriptions and keywords. There’s a dedicated security team at Joomla! keeping an eye on everything. You can easily publish content yourself, and work to set or custom templates.

How do I create a website using Joomla!?

Joomla! is open source, which means it’s free. From our point of view, we can use it’s advanced settings to create something beautiful and bespoke for your business, then hand it over to you to work with. Or manage it for you, if you don’t have the time.

There’s a useful 12-step process for creating a website on Joomla! if you fancy getting the lowdown. But if you want to take the hard work out of fiddling with its more advanced settings, an agency like ours can get you market-ready.

In conclusion...

As an agency, we use Joomla! because it’s a powerful framework that gives you great customised features. It’s free, and yes, you can build a website yourself using their templates and user guides.

But by hiring an expert to do the initial work for you, you can get an exceptional website built around your business that’s good to go and simple to maintain.

Just call us now to find out how we could create the perfect website for your business.

I once had an enlightening conversation with a sales director who saw branding as just colouring. He thought selling was a brand’s strongest tool. And of course, the two are distinct parts of a business. 

Yes, we love branding. Obviously. So, we’re going to be in the branding corner. But should we treat branding and sales separately? The thing is, the two are inextricably linked. Let us show you what we mean. 

What is branding then?

We love the succinct summing up in this quote by media and comms trailblazer, Gary Vaynerchuk. “The difference between branding and sales is simple. Are you trying to convert or are you trying to create an experience? The latter always wins.”

So, hooray. Branding is what every business should focus on. Case solved. The reality is more nuanced though. It’s important to see the value in both and to connect the dots between them.  

Branding covers a whole load of things. Everything in a brand can be slotted somewhere or another under this heading. It might be how streamlined your website experience is. Or how well your business answers calls. Yeah, it’s logo design. It’s also your personality as a business or your brand identity. And when it comes to your customers, it’s your brand perception. 

What does a strong brand identity give you?

Just like any personality, the thing that makes us stand out is individuality. A copycat taking on someone else’s brand isn’t going to fly with people in the long run. But expert branding allows you to carve out your niche or compete in a busy space. 

Building a brand that makes sense in the world we live in is important too. It has to add value, feel meaningful. It must feel engaging and relevant. While visual folks might be getting excited about typefaces, colour palettes and logos (and they are exciting,) we need to dig deeper. Much deeper. And create a brand with a purpose.  

And how about sales and marketing?

The trouble is, divisions between sales and marketing departments are just sort of expected. It’s so ingrained, it’s hard to see how the twain meet. That explains wholly the comment from the sales director at the top of this blog. 

We’d be as bold as to say that they shouldn’t be siloed. Both departments are working to the same objectives. There are some misunderstandings around each too. Sales teams are often thought of cold callers. Marketing as colouring. There’s a lot of overlap between the two. Both should be instrumental in building and promoting a brand. 

In conclusion …

Branding is more than just colouring. It has its creative perks, but you can come up with the best colour pallet known to man and remain undiscovered without the rest of the stuff. And that stuff includes a multitude of branding activities, supported by both marketing and sales departments.

We need to overcome these stigmas, slash the department siloes and work together to create truly individual brands that align on all levels.   

Which tool to use

Essentially, it’s about selecting the right tool to fit your user persona. Some channels are better than others to find your target audience. A good place to start though is LinkedIn, supported with Twitter and email marketing. This differs from B2C marketing, which often looks to Facebook and Instagram.

So, that’s settled then…

Get posting on LinkedIn, Twitter and sending marketing emails, and you’re sorted. Right? Well, sort of, but here’s the cautionary note. You always need to know and understand your user personas to get the most from digital channels. Without that insight, you’re shooting in the dark with any online activity.

It’s all about the journey

As well as knowing your user personas, you need to have clarity on their user journey. Once you have that intel you can build everything around your audiences. That could be paid ads, sponsored posts, organic search.

There are plenty of powerful ways to leverage digital channels. The key is doing it effectively to hit your audience on the right touchpoints along their journey and maximise your ROI.

How we do this

Armed with the right persona information, we personalise the user experience. Let’s start with email marketing automation to demonstrate this.

Drip campaigns through marketing automation are one example of this personalisation to create email journeys. By using sophisticated tools, email campaigns can be used to create an ongoing and meaningful conversation with customers.

And why put your effort into doing this? Well, firstly because studies show that loyal customers make up 65% of all sales for a company. As an agency, we use a multitude of platforms which include automatic messages to encourage engagement, and customised, automated actions for your leads.

How personalised is it?

Put it this way, email marketing platforms allow you to target customers with the right offer. You simply need to segment your lists to create the right brand email marketing experience. And if you’re directing your customers to the right offer, the right part of your website, you’re making it extra easy for them to keep buying from you.

It also sends automatic campaigns when you update your blog or RSS feed.

Keeping track

Just one word here. Monitoring. That’s the only way you’ll know whether your online B2B marketing campaigns are working. There are various ways to keep track of using analytics and reporting.

But before you get caught up in reporting tools, remember the reasons for collecting this data in the first place. It enables you to optimise your strategy, gather more relevant data from your audience, and understand their preferences and needs.

This gives us the insight to build solid SEO campaigns too. In turn, we start to understand how people are finding you and your competitors through search. It informs our PPC advertising strategy, and which keywords to bid on. And this will enhance your profile online.

And the social bit …

Social channels need a blog of their own to cover it effectively. But to dip a proverbial toe into the subject, we work with marketing teams to create content plans that are both tactical and push engagement. You also need to find your social media brand voice to make the most of these conversations.

But more on this next time. In the meanwhile, if you need an agency with specialist knowledge on B2B online marketing, contact our team now.

It makes good business sense to invest your time, if not your money into finding ways to improve your site’s performance though. We all know about search rankings, in theory, if not in practice. But what about the bigger picture? How does your site perform overall? Do the pages load quickly, are your social posts gaining traction?

Have you checked out Google Analytics recently?

Perhaps the biggest problem with Google’s excellent analytics tools, is that people may glance at them, but still take no action. Skimming the info and feeling slightly disheartened by your lack of hits isn’t going to get you anywhere. These tools are only worth using if you’re focussed on improving the user experience (or UX.)

The good news is that Google’s suite of tools is accessible. You can get insights for free. And you can use them to improve your website’s performance.

Then there’s Google Benchmarking

Follow us here, first click on Google Analytics. Then head to the Audiences tab along the side. Then click on Benchmarking. With wonderful whizziness, you get a report showing you how you’re comparing against your competition.

This report provides details on bounce rates, session duration (as in, how long people spend on your site,) and pageviews per session. And that’s not all. It also shows you whether this is higher or lower than the industry average.

The key is to use this information to your advantage. It tells you where to invest your time. If something’s working well, keep on it! If something’s not working so well, find a new approach.

There’s more …

So, you’re armed with competitor insights after your stop at Google Benchmarking. But are there any other wins you can get at a snap? Think with Google has diagnostic tools and industry benchmarks which are worth a quick look. Here are three of the tools perfect for B2B marketing:

1. Test My Site – simply enter your domain and you’ll get a quick look at how fast your pages are loading on mobile devices compared to competitors.
2. Google Trends – found in the Culture and Trends area, this gives you information on what your customers are searching for to help you find related topics and queries to help form your content and marketing plans.
3. Advance Your Measurement – this tool shows you how well you are measuring your marketing campaigns compared to your competitors, with hints and tips for improving this.

And if this is all too much …

Some of this may be too much to handle inhouse due to time constraints or capabilities. That’s where teams like ours can help. We’re experts at digital branding and marketing. We’re also specialists in B2B marketing. It’s worth noting that B2B marketing has different traffic ad bounce rates to B2C and a lower CTR on advertising.
Similarly, there is a difference between website and ad traffic. Understanding all this to get the right leverage is key. If you need an expert to get real benefit from Google Analytics, contact us now.

The difficulty is keeping up with the ever-changing digital landscape. If digital is just part of your marketing puzzle, you might not be able to dedicate 100% of your time to it. So, we’ve created a digital toolkit, especially for B2B marketing managers. All through a series of blogs, starting with the lowdown on reporting and analytics.

Are reporting and analytics the same thing?

Optimised content is the way forward. That means targeted your users based on research that delves into their behaviours online. Easy-peasy? In theory, of course, it is. But when people start bandying the phrases “reporting and analytics” around, they are really talking about different things. Because the two are two separate, albeit linked, entities.

Glossary of terms: Reporting

We’re all familiar with the idea of a report. Reporting in digital marketing is getting all your information and organising it.
Once the raw data is collated and organised the information can be used to do things like plan marketing campaigns and measure your progress. It might reveal the number of interactions from a campaign. The number of people who’ve visited a webpage, or, the number of sales leads you gathered.
By making sense of the data, you can set and meet goals as a business. It can also reveal areas for improvement. As an agency, we have access to the right tools to collect this data and create reports for you to move onto the next stage and gain the insights you need for your digital marketing campaigns.

Glossary of terms: Analytics

It’s safe to say that this is where it’s important to highlight both the differences between reporting and analytics and the way they are connected. Analytics is all about interpreting the data gathered and using it in marketing activities.

While it’s different from the actual act of getting and organising the data in the first place. You could think of reporting as the gathering part of the process, and the analytics as the creative brain. The part that makes sense of the data.

But the two are invaluable to each other. Because if you have poor quality data, no amount of analytical thinking will enable you to hit the mark with your digital campaign. Likewise, if you have robust data but fail to see patterns and keys within it, you won’t be able to spin it to your advantage.

Using the right tools

Fancy tools and platforms are all part of the digital marketing world. Using the right ones for your business is the key. There are loads of reporting tools out there, and they are not all made equal. KissMetrics and Google Analytics are perhaps two of the most popular.

But, if you have a digital marketing agency, like W/Brand, onboard, they will take all the hard work out of finding the right tools for you. So, you can focus on creating effective digital campaigns with the best data, insights, and support.

I know, “tell me something I don’t know.” Well, in a digital marketing sense, a SWOT helps you form a plan. And although everyone knows what a SWOT is, it's not used enough in digital marketing strategy.

And what on earth is a TOWS?

If that thought alone has set your mind spinning, (whether you’re firmly in the SWOT analysis camp or you’ve just realised that you’re not using one for digital marketing,) we may just blow your mind with the next part. Because we see the merits of a SWOT, and we raise you a TOWS. Yes, it’s sort of the same. But, in our opinion, better in a digital marketing strategy sense. Let us explain.

The TOWS technique

If you have a head for acronyms and perhaps anagrams, you’ll have already noticed that TOWS is a rearrangement of SWOT. Essentially, that’s what the TOWS technique does. It swaps the elements of a traditional SWOT about. But it’s about more than simply shifting some letters around. It allows you to form both an internal and external picture of your brand. And it’s not exactly a new thing either. It was published way back in 1982, in a paper called The TOWS Matrix A Tool for Situational Analysis by Heinz Weirich.

Problem, meet solution

To be clear, that doesn’t exactly give you a SWOT by a different name. It’s a distinct tool in its own right. Rather than simply identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it begins to match up those strands. Such as strengths with opportunities, threats with weaknesses. It aligns problems with solutions. That gives it more of a punch as a tool than your straightforward SWOT.

In practice

When we form a digital marketing strategy for a business, we start with a SWOT and turn that into a TOWS. If we marry up each of the four elements, in turn, we start building both an internal and an external plan of action for your brand. Opportunities and threats belong to the external realm of your brand, strengths and weaknesses come from within.

We work through each segment methodically and create a strategy based on identifiable drivers, and actual KPIs. The thing to remember though is that each of those four elements is related to one another, rather than siloed in their segment of the page. It’s the relationship between them that creates the strategy.

Where this fits into digital marketing strategy

While we're big advocates for the TOWS technique, it’s worth pointing out that this isn’t the beginning, middle, and end of the strategic process. It is a great tool for forming the basis for a strategy, but it works best in combination with other tools, such as competitor research, competitor SWOT analysis and of course, keyword research. It also needs to contain accurate information to get the most from it. Just like anything strategic.

But if this has piqued your interest, contact us to find out how we work, and how we can help you to create a bespoke digital marketing strategy now.

Download a TOWS Analysis worksheet for your digital marketing plans. 

Where do you start?

If you look up digital marketing strategy online there’s a lot of talk around inbound marketing. There are also great tips on lead generating channels and apps, which give you a clearer idea of what you’re playing with.

And while it’s all well and good to know that avenues like social media advertising and SEO are there to help you power forward with your digital marketing, you still may be left wondering what to do with this information. How do you implement it to best effect?

Why hire an agency?

Because let’s face it, unless you’re a dab hand at digital marketing, chances are you’ll need some support to get your strategy in this particular field off the ground and soaring high. As a brand and digital agency, we offer the sort of advice and guidance you need to do this.

Again, sounds great in theory, we know. But what does that look like? This is the part that interests us too, so we decided to write a short guide on our approach. Of course, we tailor it to each client, but this gives you important insight into the broader strokes.

1. Define

Like anything in the marketing world, being methodical is the best way to tackle your digital marketing strategy. B2B marketing requires a different approach in terms of audience targeting. Naturally, it’s about building relationships. It’s also about proving you’re worth investing in.

To define the strategy, we start by looking closely at these four key elements:

• Audience
• Content strategy
• Channels
• Budget

That means that nothing is left to chance. We know exactly who we’re talking to, the best platforms to find them, what to say to them, and all within your budget.

We’ll talk more about the kinds of tools we use to deliver this “define” stage of the strategy in later blogs, but they include:

• Marketing SWOT analysis – we align problems with solutions using a variation of a SWOT, called a TOWS approach
• Competitor SWOT analysis – checking out the competition
• Keyword research – to finetune all your SEO campaigns
• Competitor research – to get a deeper look at what your competitors are doing and find ways to leverage your market position

2. Develop

Once we have a clear path forward, we start filling in the blanks. For example, having an overarching idea of your content strategy is great, but from there we need to flesh out the details, so we know what steps are involved and how they align with your KPIs. The same goes for your SEO strategy and so on.

In the “develop” stage we focus on the following:

• Content plan – filling in a comprehensive content plan of titles, topics, and target audiences
• Researching keywords – which will be used in content and campaigns
• Campaign messaging – develop clear, meaningful, cohesive campaign messaging
• Content creation – we develop stellar content that will gain attention
• SEO – running through all our digital activity, your SEO will be honed across content and campaigns

3. Distribute

Now you have an all-singing, all-dancing digital marketing strategy, you have to get it out into the world. And this part requires just as much care and attention as the first two stages. Without this, your beautifully planned, expertly crafted campaigns and content won’t give you the returns you’re hoping for.

In this phase, we take a close look at the nuts and bolts of your activity to ensure they are performing in the way you need them to. This includes:

• Advertising campaign management – exploring options, testing them, and finding strategies that give you the best return is all part of our approach to campaign management.
• Analytics – chewing over the numbers from things like organic website visits and email open rates enable us to see what’s landing well, what isn’t, and adapting accordingly.
• Reporting and monitoring – data can reveal lots of useful clues into your target audiences. With the right approach to reporting and monitoring your B2B digital activity, we can discover more about your customers and develop campaigns to fit.

Find out more about our three-step approach

We’re genuinely passionate about what we do. We love nothing better than getting into the intricacies of B2B digital marketing strategies, and we’ve been doing just that for years. But although we’re proud of our three-step approach, nothing beats finding out what that looks like for individual businesses. If you want to find out how we’d work with you, get in touch with us now.

As an agency, we work with start-ups every day of the week, so we decided to put a small guide together for anyone else in this position. So, you can get some idea of what start-up branding should entail, and why brand development is so important to your brand.

Where to start costing brand development

First and foremost, the annoying thing is that there’s no hard and fast rule for costing brand development. Every business is different. You’ll have varying budgets, goals and market challenges. There are, however, some common themes when it comes to defining what you need to think about. But more on that in a moment.

Each new business is funded differently. It may be from your savings, you could have help from other sources. Whatever your situation and amount of money in the pot, it’s good to break it down and set aside a percentage for branding. Why? Because a clear brand identity will set you apart in the marketplace. 

You only have to think about global leaders to see how effective that is in the real world. But, for yourself, think of it as your way in! Every marketplace has competitors. The more your propositions stand out and resonate with your audience, the more traction you can hope to gain. Experts generally recommend dedicating somewhere between 5-15% of your total start-up budget on branding. 

A quick check on your calculator will give you an idea of what your budget will look like once working out the percentages here. Here at W/Brand, we often see clients spend about 10% of their total start-up budget. That includes our work with cloud-based businesses Illapa, Inca and Gelos.

Cloud business brand identity for Inca. 

Cloud business brand identity for Illapa. 

What should be included in start-up branding

So, you’ve probably now got a budget range in your head. Depending on the number of noughts on that figure, you’re now mentally moving onto what exactly that should be spent on. Maybe even how far it will stretch.

Most start-up branding projects will include strands like this:

• Creating a visual identity that will extend across all your online and printed materials 
• Crafting your  brand story and market positioning, this can range from finding your core values and articulating them in the best way, to training all your employees and developing thorough competitor analysis 
• Developing your website and company logo
• Refining your company’s name 

You only need to read through the list of requirements here to see how much it can vary from one start-up to another. For example, you might already have your company name nailed on. You might only be a team of two, or one! So, comms training isn’t necessary. 

What about branding cost?

Ok, so let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. And just how much do all these elements cost? Again, the teeth clenching reality is that depending on the complexity of each project, it will vary. But let’s give you a clue. 

Anywhere between £5,000 and £30,000+ are considered rough budget brackets for a small business brand cost. Things like market research can creep from modest expenditure upwards with just a few variables added to the brief. If you’re looking at spending around £4,500 upwards on a basic website, and £1,500 upwards on brand guidelines, you’re on the right track.   

In conclusion...

It’s hard to find definitive costs for costing brand development from a quick google search, and that’s because like everything else in the realms of starting up, it varies by company. That doesn’t mean that you have to go in completely blind though. 

Having a very rough idea of what sort of prices you can expect are one thing. But more importantly, dedicating the right percentage of your budget to your brand development will help you get off on the right foot. That, and finding the right agency to help you develop your branding and stay on budget. 

W/Brand has a strong track record in working with start-ups across the globe. Our expertise is in tailored creative solutions and brand development. And we do all this both remotely and with locally-based companies. To find out more about our services, and the businesses we’ve helped from starting up and beyond, take a look at our work and services. Or, get in touch now and we’ll take you through your options.

Walking App Brand Identity

Ultimately, most customers will experience your brand for the first time online. It’s fair to say that the pressure is on to make sure your website and any other channels (think social media and search for starters) say and do what they need to. Customers expect you to “tell your story online” through these channels. And your website is effectively your digital brand hub and home to your brand asset management. It’s no understatement to say that it’s central to the customer experience. 

Making your website organic 

What do we mean by organic exactly? Unless you’ve been on another planet for the past decade, you’ve probably heard the expression, “content is king.” It is. But you still need to have your clear brand identity running throughout anything that exists online.

The best websites work by flexing organically. They grow and adapt to customer and business needs. Life, of course, is dynamic. As is business, and as are people. But at the root of that, customer journeys need to be kept simple yet meaningful. That means intuitive navigation to remove unnecessary clicks, and the right content to start conversations. One example is with dynamic landing pages, which use browsing histories to tailor homepage content to the user.

Where do you start?

This is both the hard and the easy part. Because it’s about either knowing what to do yourself or getting someone knowledgeable to help you. For instance, we build websites that grow with the needs of your business. It’s not an unchangeable website design that stays up for years until you have the time and perhaps the budget for a full overhaul. 

It works by creating feature-rich websites as standard, with customisable, dynamic landing pages. That means for each visitor, you’ll have tailored headlines and content to match their search query. It works as a brand hub for your business, which can also be tapped into for campaigns and advertising. 

Why we use open source content management systems 

We do all this with open-source content management systems (or CMS.) The tech here isn’t new. It’s been around for a couple of decades. You’ll know platforms like WordPress, and maybe Joomla and Drupal. These are built on an open-source PHP content management system. 

What that means to you, is flexible brand asset management, including things like small brochure websites and blogs, to advanced e-commerce systems and brand asset management tools. You could say they’re built for marketing teams.

We call ourselves a Joomla design agency. And that’s because it offers an advanced and robust CMS framework, and an easy-to-use content management system. The result is a dynamic content managed website with simplistic, practical tools like custom forms and drag & drop page builders. All the essentials needed to keep your website fresh and feature-rich.

Here are just some of the standard features you have with a website like this:

• Drag & drop page builder
• News and article publishing
• Case studies
• Blog with contributors, tags and categories
• SEO and open graph tools
• Multipage forms with CRM and marketing automation integration
• Live chat
• Downloadable files
• Gallery/slideshows
• Events and calendar tools
• Ad banner positions 
• Advanced search
• Members login and registration processing with payments
• CDN and AWS storage options

More advanced content management components include:

• Marketing automation integration
• E-commerce 
• Brand asset management tools
• Customer forums

To find out more about our web design services and our Joomla websites, get in touch now.

W/Brand work from the ground up. Consider us the architects in the construction of your digital house – we’ll create a secure and stylish platform which has optimal functionality and ergonomics, onto which we can help you to create a digital domain that maximises every opportunity available in your particular niche.

Choosing W/Brand is choosing to make the most of our creative intuition. It’s choosing to maximise your voice in a world full of clamour. It’s choosing to be both seen and heard.

Complete digital solution

We’re a full digital agency, helping businesses working from an online platform to maximise their exposure and heighten their kudos through coherent strategies that carry design right through your message and into your customer’s ear.

We’re talking about consultancy, relevance and brand building, right across your digital channels.

We know it’s not just the writing that makes the content shareable. That’s one of our USPs. We know that there are a plethora of reasons why people read and share – the content has to talk the talk, walk the walk, and, equally importantly – look the part.

How we work

First we look inward – at who you are and what you offer – and then we look out to the digital world and how you can better make your mark on it.

Keyword research and investigation into your niche come first. Then comes site editing, making sure your branding and content are on-message. Then we turn towards campaigns.

We think campaigns are the best way to put your content in front of potential customers, and drive them back to your site, by linking your campaigns to relevant search traffic. We’re talking digital brand building.

Using intuition built on experience, we’ll provide creative solutions to redress your branding – whether you just need a new pair of shoes, or a full wardrobe overhaul.

Core Services

Consultancy - Research and search development

Optimising your keywords for search engines is not the first step.

The first step to maximising your online presence is truly knowing your offering, and your audience.

We’ll find out what language your customer base is using in Search. We’ll find out what you and your competitors are appearing for in the Search Engine Results Pages. And we’ll identify the opportunities you’re missing to soar up the SERPs.

Content Design

Online reading is different from sitting down with your favourite book. Online, we don’t read word for word – we scan for the information we want the site to deliver.

That means that words are only one facet of creating readable content.

Content Design means turning old-school writing on its head, tailoring a message that is punchy, readable, and correctly laid-out for the online reader.

We know that content design means creating fascinating articles, which are written with the online reader in mind. We maximise instances for Search Engine Optimisation, as well as designing your content in the most user-friendly, digestible - and ultimately, shareable - way possible.

PPC

Pay-per-Click advertising drives targeted customers right to your site – but costs you every time they click. It’s an amazing opportunity to bring people to your party – but we want a specially chosen, VIP guest list. We aren’t sending out open invites.

Our focus on detailed keyword and Search Engine Results Pages research means that we are uniquely positioned to bid on the best keywords for your campaign and get the most relevant potential customers through the door.

We’re here to make sure your target audience is well chosen, maximising your ability to recruit relevant new clientele and making sure every penny of your campaign is well spent.

Email marketing

What makes you open an email? A catchy subject line? Use of capitalisation? Being from a trusted address?

Before a consumer even reads your email, the biggest battle is for their click. Will they click ‘Open’ or resign you to ‘Trash’?

Much like paper post, consumers are getting tired of the slurry of emails arriving in their inbox every morning.

We fight to create the best email marketing content. We’re up to date with the best hints and tricks to get that crucial first click, and our nous for content design means we know how to tap-in to the consumer’s soft spot, and achieve the goal - getting that email opened.

What’s the point in creating amazing copy if no one opens your email in the first place? First we’ll get the email opened – then focus on delivering great copy inside the email too, to keep them coming back for more and clicking open again and again.

Web design

Web designers often sit separately from those creating day-to-day brand content, onsite, on the blog or on social media. Here at W/Brand, we think that’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Web designers are there to simplify the user experience, make sure your site is best optimised for both your customers and search engines, and create an aesthetic that summarises your brand and your offering.

We think every campaign you run, every product you launch and every piece of content you create should have this functionality as its backbone – so how could we separate web design from the day-to-day running of your site?

Who are we?

We’re a campaign-led digital design and marketing agency.

More importantly, who are you?

W/Brand masterminds your content design alongside your marketing – because a coherent message is not only delivered through words, but right across your branding – from colour choices to layout to logos.

We use creativity and intuition to put the question ‘who are you?’ to the forefront - and make sure your customers know who you are, too.

Get in touch today and start building your digital house, drop us a line at 03330 233 235 or email us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

To say that this is a difficult time is probably the understatement of the century. Finding a “new normal” means honing the home office, coping with school closures. Coexisting in previously unthinkable ways. And the reality is, there are more questions than answers right now. We don’t know how far-reaching this pandemic will be.

This uncertainty is an uncomfortable state to exist in. But if we were to look for positives homeworking is proving itself to be a powerful business asset. As a remote working design agency, we already know how effective it can be on a global stage.

So, here are our tips for maximising it to the full.

Top tips for effective remote working:

1. Exercise.

Our favourite way to embrace exercise is early in the day. Whether that’s walking the dog first thing, or just doing a circuit around the block. And when you do it, what do you notice?
Chances are if you tune in, you’ll hear things you wouldn’t usually with the lack of traffic and ambient noise we’ve grown accustomed to in “normal” life.

Doing this before you start work or get sucked into messages and emails on your phone will help you start each day with a clean slate.

2. Make a plan.

We love a plan! Because with one, you can stay on track and dodge the minefield that is mixing up home and working life. Many of us escape home and work elsewhere. Now, it’s all too tempting to get stuck into the washing. The gardening. Putting that picture up. You name it!

If you start each day with an outline of what you want to achieve, you’ll feel a lot more fulfilled when it comes to home time. If you can still call it that.

3. Take breaks.

It’s all too easy to miss breaks when you’re working from home. There are several reasons for that. You might feel paranoid about proving that you’re working to your boss. So, you put in extra hours. Or you’re getting side-tracked by home life and making it up by extending your working day and skipping breaks.

Just remember that the laws around breaks at work are there for a reason. You’ll be less productive if you stare at your screen for hours on end. One way to stay disciplined with this is to schedule regular 15-minute breaks. Be strict. It’ll benefit your work and your mental health if you do.

4. Delegate.

You don’t need to do it all. We repeat you do not need to do it all. You might feel alone sitting at your office at home, but most of us are part of a wider team. It can also feel a little disjointed to delegate when you’re all sat remotely.

Find a way to make it more comfortable for you and your colleagues. Chatting over video calls might work well. Just be sure to lean on team members when you need it and offer help if you can to keep that team spirit going.

5. Finish with a plan.

Yes, we love a plan. As we’ve said! The most effective way we’ve found is to end with a plan and pick that up the next day. Write down your work, deadlines, aims for the next day before you clock off. Of course, these plans may need some fluidity, but just by doing it, you’ll have closure at the end of your day.

A remote working design agency

Creative projects may fall by the wayside as teams reduce numbers, reshuffle, or just adapt to new working methods. The good news is that we’re a remote design agency. We’ve spent years working effectively with clients across the globe to create brand identities and websites. For us, it’s all about creative design agency home working.

So, if you’re struggling to fit your creativity into the 9-5, get in touch now. W/Brand creative team is well placed to cope with this uncertainty, and we’re here to help.

When done right, brand guidelines will give your teams both consistency and flexibility. That means you can create a look and feel throughout your marketing materials that defines who you are. This only works to full effect if everyone in your organisation can easily access the resources in your brand guideline kit.

The more spread out you are as a business, perhaps across the globe or sectors, the more important it is to promote consistent brand guidelines that can be reached and understood by everyone within the business.

Do you need brand guidelines?

Of course, any marketing manager will say a resounding “yes” to this. Because it will support all your marketing initiatives, and it will effectively tie in any marketing with your company goals and visions. Your typical brand guidelines will include things like:

• Your vision – that is, your history, goals, and personality
• Your mission statement – a summing up of your aims and values
• Visual guidance – specifics on colour palettes, logos, typestyle, image style and designs for printed and online materials
• Tone of voice – for all content and copywriting. This will inevitably link in with your brand’s personality definition

Suffice to say that those components to a brand guideline document are common sense to any marketing body. One route is to use a free template to create your brand guidelines. And there are plenty of those on the web. But then how do you distribute it, along with any inevitable changes to the document as you go along?

As with anything like this, you can spend an age creating guidance documents. If they’re not used, their value drops. So, it comes down to two things:

1. Making them accessible
2. Encouraging people to use them

Communicating the fact that they’re there is one step. If they change, due to a rebrand or something similar, make a song and dance about that. Remind people regardless that there are brand guidelines in place and tell people where they can access them. Point two sorted. As for the first one, there needs to be a convenient way for anyone in the company to get hold of them when they need them.

Why take them online?

We live in a digital age. And that opens the doors to convenient file sharing on a global scale. After creating your brand guidelines, you can work from a shared resource that boosts collaboration and fast access to marketing tools like these.  

Here we direct your attention to the W/Brand Hub. Because it’s our answer to this challenge, and we can tell you exactly why it works. As a client, you can access brand guideline templates with a flexible, monthly pricing structure.

It works as an online hub for marketing teams, with all the essential documents like this. Also, as a collaboration tool. Employees can get real-time project updates, complete and track all account management requests, and company-wide access to brand assets.

Everyone knows where to go to get hold of them. A bit like YouTube’s approach to sharing accessible brand resources, but tailored to you. 

Why choose brand asset management?

Essentially, what we’re talking about here goes one step further from creating shareable brand guidelines. It’s sophisticated digital asset management that reaches corner to corner of your brand.

When it comes to the benefits of this versus simply downloading a free brand guidelines template, here’s what we’ve found:

• Everything in one place – it keeps both print and digital brands assets together.
• View and share – your assets can be viewed privately, or publicly if you needed. Which might be appropriate for something like your corporate guidelines.
• Account management – as mentioned above, you can do everything from viewing and assigning orders to POs to tracking the real-time budget left on a project. Essentially, it works as an online agency account manager.

This gives your teams the tools to work consistently, effectively, and to one unified purpose.

In conclusion …

There’s a lot to be said for the benefits of brand guidelines. But if they’re difficult to understand, use, or get hold of, they’re not going to work as hard as they should. The point of them is to create consistency and flexibility for your brand. And it’s worth taking a consistent and flexible approach to sharing and using them throughout your organisation.

Brand asset management is a way of doing exactly that. By leveraging the tech at our fingertips, we can make the world a smaller place. Whether your teams are in London or Lisbon, everyone has easy access to the same resources. More than that, true digital asset management powers teams with real-time knowledge. Consistency and flexibility across active projects are boosted to the max.

All this makes it an option that leaves downloadable brand guidelines in the shade. If you’d like to find out more about full brand asset management and our Hub, contact us now, and see how it stacks up against your average brand guidelines PDF.

We are not ordinary. 

Hiring WithBrand is buying creative intuition – brand design that can swap sides, and walk in your shoes to deliver branding that sees the bigger picture. That, in our humble opinion, is what sets us apart.

We’re a creative marketing and design consultancy focussed on delivering distinctive, recognisable business personas.  

Our bag is: brand naming | visual identity | literature | identity guidelines | website content and design.

Our services

Branding is your voice, your unique fingerprint and your USP. It’s how your audience responds, engages with, and, most importantly, remembers you.

This is where we can inject value to your business.

We work with businesses and not-for-profit organisations, speaking right to your customers and creating a brand they remain loyal to.

Our core design services are:

Brand Strategy

Research

Research is the backbone of a coherent strategy. We will know you, your business, and your competitors.

Co-design workshops

Knowing your business inside-out means two heads working as one. Co-design workshops let us join forces, sharing knowledge to better your branding.

Value proposition

Are you attractive? Do you entice your customers? Value proposition makes you the Venus of your industry.

Tone of Voice

Whether fun or formal, silly or ceremonial, your tone of voice is the humanity of your brand. We’ll shine a light on your business personality.

Core Values

What are your central tenets? We’ll help you discover and define the foundations of your business to help understand where you are, and where you’re going.

Brand Development

Brand Workshops

The more heads in the brainstorm, the more the ideas rain on! We’ll unite the best brains to bring forth the best ideas.

Brand Naming

What’s in a name? A lot. A name can say who you are, what you intend, and what you offer. Be a Guru, not a Graham*. * Grahams can be great too – but we got carried away with alliteration…

Brand Identity Design

Creating a business is like creating a persona, completely from scratch. We want to make you everyone’s BFF.

Visual Brand Guidelines

There are visual themes that should run through your business, so that you look coherent and consistent. Guidelines help you make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. 

Signage and Wayfinding

Help people get to where they need to be, quickly and easily with messaging that’s been masterminded by branding geniuses. 

Brand Engagement

Art Direction/Advertising

Advertising gets you seen and heard – we’ll work on your style to make sure you seize attention rather than annoy.

Copywriting and content marketing

Your copy has to sing and dance. We’ve got the moves – we’ll sort content strategy, get your tone set right and sort the SEO.

Digital Marketing

Marketing online functions differently to marketing offline. Know what hoops to jump and when. 

Campaign Development

What is your aim and where are you going? We’ll take your goals and make them concrete, successful and achievable.

Corporate Literature

Different industries throw up different challenges, just as B2B has different needs to B2C. Corporate Literature requires research and real industry knowledge.

Direct Mail

We all know paper post needs to work if it’s going to miss an immediate trip to the trash. We know how to make that mail get down to business.

Film

We live in a switched-on world, where media bombards. New media offer a refreshed approach to your brand voice, advertising and information. 

Digital Experience

Website co-design workshop

Knowing the theory isn’t enough – practical experience gives you the confidence to know how to make your website work for you. Working in a co-design workshop gives you that confidence.

UX design

Prioritising User Experience is key to making your business speak to your clientele. Making that process function can be the difference between conversions and tumbleweed.

UI design

User Interface design is the sister of UX design. On the flipside of UX functionality, UI design makes sure the look and feel fits the bill.

Bootstrap front-end development

Bootstrap is a free, open-source web framework to design responsive, mobile-first sites. Develop with HTML, CSS and JS.

Wordpress and Joomla websites

Two top Content Management Systems to help you navigate your content and empower you in your own design.

CRM Integration

 Make sure that your site and Customer Relationship Management systems integrate, allowing you to make best use of your customer and account details. 

Email marketing

Making that subject line clickable is the perennial challenge. We’ll help your emails avoid the ‘delete’ button.

Social Media Branding

We get tempted to buy everywhere we go online – not just through directly entering a site URL. We’ll get your social media telling the same story as your site to get those clicks converting to sales.  

Contact us today

Are you ready to boss your branding? To make sure you’re firing on all cylinders, sending out the right message across all channels and getting that copy to convert?

If you’re prepared to make your marketing coherent, cohesive and successful, drop us a line at 03330 233 235 or email us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Despite the incredible changes the digital connected world has conjured in our lives, the printed page still has the power to resonate, engage and persuade.

Ansys UK based in Milton Park, Abingdon Oxfordshire, asked W/Brand to deliver digital marketing management and web advertising design for the R17 software release. We created highly impactful designs using dynamic typography with short headlines for each targeted user.

The web advertising was published on various engineering publications and used as part of a Google Ads display campaign. All traffic was sent to a centrally managed landing page with signup conversions sent through to the sales CRM, Salesforce. 

We're able to use the large audience list in Google Ads generated from the ansys.com website traffic recorded by Google Analytics. Using the audience lists is a great way to improve conversions and reduce the cost per conversion. We also create audience lists when we start working with any website client so we can leverage their power to convert in the future. 

If you need B2B digital marketing support give us a call today 00 44 3330 233 235!

It’s simple, you need to be authentic. Branding isn’t just about colouring, and choosing what your logo design should look like, it’s far more complex and powerful than that.

It's best to stay as informed as possible and make sure your company sticks to the UK and international copyright laws, depending on where you operate.

It’s extremely important because it can directly affect your business. Copyright is the kind of thing that can come back to bite you later down the line if you don’t respect the law, or take steps to protect your own precious work.

Understanding copyright rules isn’t as complicated as you might think. We know a thing or two about copyright, and we act as a sort of ‘Brand Guardian’ for our clients, guiding them through every step of the process whilst having their best interests at heart. We can also help by sharing some of our tips, and explain what copyright is, so you feel better informed.

Copyright basics you need to know

According to the Intellectual Property Office, copyright is a right that is given to original work, such as musical, artistic, literary, dramatic and music works, and sound recordings, films, broadcasts and typographical arrangements.

This includes all digital work, like written content, website copy, videos, design work and creative projects. Copyright owners have complete control to do what they like with their own work, and they can also authorise external parties to use their work in a similar way by licence.

Basically, you can transfer the ownership of your copyright to other people, which is described as ‘assignment.’ The transfer of ownership is something WithBrand is happy to do for a negotiated fee if a client requires it.

It is important not to confuse ownership of a work with ownership of the copyright. For example, a person may have acquired an original copyright work, e.g. a painting, letter or photograph, but unless the copyright in it has also been transferred, it will remain with the creator.

Another example might be an author allowing their work to be used for a film, even though the film company may use their copy, they are still the copyright owner. The creator of an original copyright work is usually the first owner, and a single work can be created and owned by more than one person.

What aren’t you allowed to do with copyrighted work?

As well as what you can do with your own copyrighted work, you should be well informed about what you can’t do with other people’s work. In a digital world where everything is readily available, it can be tempting to borrow things like images from Google without getting permission or checking the copyright rules for that image, or referencing your source, but this is not a good idea. According to UK law, restricted acts related to copyright and using other people’s work include:

• Copying the work
• Issuing copies of the work to the public
• Renting or lending the work to the public
• Making an adaptation of the work
• Performing, showing or playing the work in public
• Communicating the work to the public

Protecting your work

It’s always best to have some specific information relating to copyright on your website and in your contracts. This will help protect you should an issue arise. For example, we have a section in our T’s & C’s specifically about our copyright policy. Take a look at it here. We are really flexible when it comes to copyright, but equally, we value the work that we produce and its copyright.

Choosing an agency that values copyright

When you work with us, we care about your company just as much as you do. By looking after a brand, brochure or website design copyright we can to act as a brand guardian for you. There are tangible benefits for commissioning a design agency that takes all issues surrounding copyright seriously.

If copyright is something that concerns you, we can take the weight off your shoulders, and help you to make sure your work is protected, ensuring you don’t cross any lines. We take a lot of pride in our work and take measures to protect its copyright, which means you won’t get design work which is devalued because its creator simply doesn’t care about it, and will freely transfer it to anyone.

Brand licensing

It’s also handy to know a little about brand licensing. We will follow up on this in another blog post soon, but here’s some info on the basics for now. Licensing, in a nutshell, is the renting of an intangible asset. The entity in question may then be used in conjunction with a product, and there are different types of brand licensing.

Consultancy and design

At WithBrand we deliver effective creative thinking and designs that work harder for your business. Get in touch on 00 44 (0)3330 233 235 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Disclaimer
*Please note this is not legal advice, should you have copyright concerns it’s best to seek your own legal advice.*

References

UK Trademark - https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/trade-marks
UK Copyright - https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/copyright
Intellectual Property Office - https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office
Image: Graphic design and illustration for a Boyes Turner brochure

Ebook design and production is another string to our digital bow. We completed this for one of the Thames Valley's top legal firms. Boyes Turner has a vast library of technical documents perfect for publication as an ebook. The HR eBooks are aimed at small to medium-sized companies HR managers who need legal support on a variety of HR issues. We designed and built the first edition of The Dispute Toolkit ebook the first one in a series of twelve HR-related titles.

For more information visit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dispute-Toolkit-employers-disciplinary-process-ebook/dp/B01EM6NJO6, oh and the price includes a Free 30-minute consultation with an HR lawyer!

Essentially eBooks are websites built with old fashioned HTML code. Visual design elements and typography are handled by CSS (cascading style-sheets), with the navigation being made out of a series of hyperlinks to individual pages or anchor tags within the text.

To ensure your eBook works well on all eReaders and smartphone apps it's best to keep the design style very simple as there will be variations. Amazon's original Kindle® will override most of your CSS work with its own formatting. Making it a medium of constriction and frustration for graphic designers. But ultimately it's a simple book format and rightly so, allowing you to experience a book on a mobile device wherever you choose. The copy is designed to reflow depending on your device screen-size and orientation. Users can change the text size and page background colour, even switch the screen display to night mode at a touch and swipe of a finger. So it's all about making the ebook as accessible as possible.

So when designing a text-based ebook you're really in the mindset of a 70’s hot-metal typesetter, without the monocle or magnifying glass.

Dispute Toolkit brand identity and logo design

Do you have technical or knowledge-based documents hidden away? These could become great (useful) eBooks.

If you have a lot of technical knowledge or a story to tell about your business as well as dungeons and dragons, then an eBook could be a way to engage an audience and raise your profile as an expert in your field.

We can help you design and develop an eBook and get it online relatively quickly. Crucially, like their printed cousins the text manuscript should be signed off before any design work starts. However one of the benefits of eBooks is the ability to edit and change content and even republish the title once it's online. Stores such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble etc will replace and update submitted titles within 24 hours. So don’t panic, there aren't 100,000 copies with incorrect page numbers on a ship coming from China. Well, I hope not anyway.

If you require any assistance or ideas about the design and production of eBooks and how this might work for your business give us a call on 00 44 (0)3330 233 235 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Top Image: Graphic design of Boyes Turner ebook cover

To capitalise on years on business coaching experience, the founders of the Business Coach Kit wanted to distil and deliver an online modular toolkit for business coaches to use around the world. 

With the content in production W/Brand was asked to create a brand identity and website design for the Business Coach Kit. After immersing ourselves into the vision of the brand, the modular and toolkit style of content, made us think about how Airfix models were delivered sometime in complex but methodical designs. This opened up a strong visual route for the Business Coach Kit identity to follow. 

Digital advertising using Google Ads and YouTube campaigns gave the new business startup a great foundation generating conversions form North American, South Africa and Australia. 

Business Coach Kit identity design

Brand statement logotype

Responsive website design

We can help you develop your business brand, get in touch on 00 44 (0)3330 233 235 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Perendie is a unique business management platform automating the automatable aspects of leadership, governance and management. The Business Management System (BMS) enables people to achieve their full potential, by motivating and enabling them to achieve the outcomes they’ve committed to and implements strategy by aligning everyone and everything around the corporate goals. 

We are asked to create a new brand identity and user interface for the business management system. There was a lot to consider but we wanted to make sure the brand was clear. So we built the logotype out of the brand name itself customising the "P" to indicate the strategic alignment the business management system delivers. 

We developed a colour palette built upon a slate grey with acid colours to work as accent colours formed from colours of an industrial brick building but used for a digital brand user interface. 

The business system delivers building blocks for large business so we wanted to echo this in the branding. We really enjoyed working in this space, working with tech startup business owners to deliver a brand design and user-interface (UI) design that resonates with their customers. 

W/Brand is a brand design agency with a digital edge, if your a tech startup we would love to work for you, get in touch on 00 44 (0)3330 233 235 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Perendie Business Management System identity design

Responsive UI design

Perendie stationery design

A new startup business needed an identity and website design to represent their knowledge of large multinationals. 

As we're a design agency based in Reading Berkshire, working for the local record office in Berkshire is always a pleasure to do. We created a new brand identity for the public archives creating a window into the past for the public to delve into their local history. The half arrowhead window visual identity echos the historic past but also acts as a wayfinding signpost or compass into the lovingly restored and catalogued artefacts. 

From our work designing the Berkshire Echo, the quarterly Berkshire Record Office newsletter, we discovered a wonderful sketch from the 19th Century of the Herne’s Oak in Windsor Great Park, which fitted perfectly in the arrow logotype.

This formed the primary brand identity which can be used with or without the Herne's Oak when needed. The project also covered:

• brand colour theory
• brand typography
• signage design

The Berkshire Record Office allows people to delve into their local history online or at the purpose-built record and archives office at Coley Ave, Reading Berkshire. 

© Berkshire Record Office located on Castle Hill Reading Berkshire.

Berkshire Record Office identity design with Herne's Oak

Berkshire Record Office stationery design

Berkshire Record Office newsletter

What they say about us

WithBrand's work is highly professional and always looks great, making the most of the source material. They are also a pleasure to deal with.
Lisa Spurrier - Berkshire Record Office

Berkshire Record Office literature design

Always Flourishing is a top supply teaching agency in the Thames Valley and home counties. W/Brand was tasked to develop a group brand identity to act as a logo mark for all the group's educational related businesses. 

The new logo design successfully visualises the nurturing and sowing of seeds teachers bring to children. Its brand logo also communicated the holistic values of the business within the group. The work also included:

• Brand guidelines
• Brand colours
• Brand typography
• Website design (front-end only)

Flourish & Nourish education brand aim to support children's education the home.

What they say about our brand identity work

We are so pleased with the brand designs for Flourish & Nourish and its sister businesses - Always Flourishing and Tutorbox. Our design brief was ambitious. WithBrand was able to interpret and create a look and feel which is not only organic and original but manages to evoke our core value of bringing wellbeing to education in a way that is unique and refreshing.

It's bang on brief, exceeds all our expectations and we would have no hesitation in recommending WithBrand to other organisations that appreciate such a bespoke and personalised design service.
Patrick Casey - Director Flourish & Nourish

Tutorbox is home educational support brand to support children at home

Suggested brand strapline for Flourish & Nourish

Working with tech startups is inspirational, and developing their startup brand identities is a privilege. We worked with iFootpath to develop a strong and instantly recognisable app icon and brand identity, to help the brand ensure growth. The app was all about community and the ability for iFootpath users (walkers) to create and publish their own walks long or short, easily. 

The app had a solid user-based with great user reviews which allowed us to be bold with the colours and form of the brand identity. 

Walking is if not the best one of the best ways to improve physical and mental health. We wanted to give iFootpath a brand identity full of positive energy to explore the outdoors wherever you are. Encouraging users to record and share their favourite walks. 

Update* The brand secured a buyout from a rival app AllTrails a US-based tech startup combining iFootpath's users into a larger worldwide community. 

Apple iOS App Store brand presence

Tech startup brand guidelines

Legal support for families with disabled children is crucial for them to get the support they need for a normal life as possible. Processes, forms and systems can confuse and stifle most. Boyes Turner pride themselves for giving supportive clear legal advice to clients to make the journey as easy as possible.

We created the illustration and graphic design for the Boyes Turner, based in Reading. Designed to be clear and supportive to show options and possible routes that can improve the quality of life for the children and wider family.  

Family law brochure design for legal services in Reading, Berkshire

Art direction, illustration and graphic design for a leading legal firm in Reading, Berkshire

B2B business owners and marketing teams want to push their business forward by creating strong recognisable brand identities. HR Solutions had outgrown their business brand and needed a new brand name and visual identity that represented their expertise and approach. 

We adapted and customised the new proposed brand's typeface's R, T and Y to show the bespoke consultancy service they offer and delivery to their clients. A more hand-holding approach than here you go.

W/Brand presented Reality HR is a new brand name and created the new corporate identity with new easy-to-use brand guidelines covering:

• brand name and expectations
• brand colour theory
• brand typography
• brand tone of voice

Brand identity and Reality HR team

Brand guideliones for HR Consultancy

We work with CEO's and business owners who want to push their business forward by creating strong recognisable brand identities. UKSE had a strong order book and were experience steady business growth, but no consistent visual brand identity. 

We evolved the existing logo design into a strong business brand logotype creating new easy-to-use brand guidelines to widen and increase brand awareness. New brand guidelines gave consistency covering:

• brand colour theory
• brand typography
• brand tone of voice
• brand livery design
• brand uniform design

The new logo is bold and strong. It visually represents the nature of the construction and utility engineering contracts. 

We also developed brand straplines for key services to develop the brand's tone of voice:

• Maintenance / Delivery reliability 
• Site services / A trusted partner
• Electrical engineering / Playing a pivotal role

Does you business brand work hard for you? Get in touch today!

People make businesses and executive talent is the lifeblood of any large successful business. Aston Fisher is a specialist executive search and interim management consultancy with offices in London and Reading.

WithBrand a brand agency working for London clients created a playful confident brand identity for the boutique consultancy and delivered a content managed website for both clients and candidates to signup on.

In a highly competitive market, the London based companies brand identity has a strong yet thoughtful personality, with an underlining sense of humour. A brand that is both knowledgable and discreet. An HR consultancy who can hook the right talent, someone who knows where to fish.

Astonfisher brand identity

What they said about us!

WithBrand are very creative and responsive and began designing only after they understood us, our proposition and the message we were trying to convey. I would recommend WithBrand to anyone wanting to create a striking brand and website to create impact with clients.
James Aston - Director Aston Fisher

Executive search & interim management brochure design

Responsive website design

Website banner design and copywriting

Visit the website http://www.astonfisher.com

As a design agency, we pride ourselves on the services we provide and in the work we deliver. We regularly work on projects from all kinds of organisations, from arts festivals, community groups and local businesses.

Identity and graphic design for South Street Arts Centre's Sitelines Festival in Reading.

A design work retrospective. From street theatre to music festivals we have developed engaging brand identities and literature for a variety of arts projects.

Brand identity and responsive website design for New Dimensions - Music and Place in partnership with The Anvil Basingstoke and Hampshire County Council.
New Dimensions website design and social media branding New Dimensions Twitter

With each project we derive as much from the brands inherent qualities as from the vibe of the projects themselves. We never think of our self as a creative agency, more like a creative team. We are focused on creating an innovative, exciting and inspiring experience for your audience. So what say we work together to make something fabulous!

Art direction, graphic design and illustration for Dynamic Dance festival literature for Reading Arts.

Redesigning the website and producing corporate literature, we created a new branding system, artwork and marketing material which led to us creating brand identities and literature for a variety of arts events and projects in Reading, Berkshire.

Art direction and graphic design for South Hill Park Arts Centre visual arts brochure.